NY Times Goes-Label Heavy on Indiana Law, Headlines Scare Quotes Around So-Called 'Religious Freedom'

April 4th, 2015 8:19 AM

On the front page of Friday's New York Times sat "Religion Laws Quickly Fall Into Retreat," a label heavy (14 "conservative" labels) 1,500-word story by Monica Davey (pictured) and religion reporter Laurie Goodstein, who filedon Indiana's controversial religious freedom law.

The Times' coverage has been slanted with both that labeling bias and scare quotes surrounding the term "religious freedom." An April 1 front-page headline also sheltered the phrase: "Bills on ‘Religious Freedom’ Upset Capitols in Arkansas and Indiana." So did a March 31 online Q&A: "Context for the Debate on ‘Religious Freedom’ Measures in Indiana and Arkansas," as well as the text of Friday's piece. (And Goodstein has pulled the exact  same scare-quote stunt before.) Meanwhile, conservative bashing terms like "ultra-conservative" are presented as fact, no scare quotes needed.

The story's text box was gleeful: "A conservative movement has a major setback."

Roman Catholic nuns and brothers in robes along with conservative activists and lawmakers, all surrounded Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana last week as he signed what was billed as a religious freedom law. Smiling and proud, some of them had cheered the bill as a way to protect religious business owners from having to provide cakes and flowers to same-sex weddings.

But on Thursday, as the state’s top Republican legislative leaders here announced they were changing the law to specify that it will not authorize discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity, a far different cast stood behind them, including a prominent gay businessman and corporate leaders from Eli Lilly, the Indiana Pacers and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

And this time, the mood was tense: There were simple nods of support, no wide smiles.

The reporters were allergic to straightforwardly referring to "religious freedom":

The shift in Indiana has played out with remarkable speed, and under the shadow of a soon-to-arrive Final Four men’s basketball tournament and the national attention that promises. For a place that a little more than a year ago appeared headed toward enshrining a same-sex marriage ban in its Constitution, the winds have shifted swiftly, leaving some conservative Christian leaders unsettled and uncertain about what may come next for state laws focused on what is called religious freedom and the alliance that adopted that phrase as its battle cry.

Religious conservatives and some Republican political operatives now describe what occurred here as a major setback. For years now, they have been using “religious freedom” as a slogan and the legal answer to the growing gay rights movement. With same-sex marriage racking up one win after another in the courts and in public opinion, the conservatives say they believed their strategy of passing religious rights laws seemed like a consensus solution as American as Abe Lincoln.

But now, many Christian conservatives say that what happened over the last week in Indiana -- and in Arkansas, where lawmakers backed away from a similar law -- has been a terrible blow to their movement. They are left with a law at war with itself, with language that seems to cancel out what it had been designed to accomplish.

....

The campaign by conservatives to make “religious liberty” a rallying cry made its public debut in 2009, when a coalition of conservative evangelical, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian leaders issued a manifesto they called the Manhattan Declaration, proclaiming that they would not cooperate with any laws that compelled them to recognize same-sex marriages or enable abortions.

Their cause took on new urgency in the following years as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops took the lead role in opposing a mandate in the Obama administration’s health care overhaul that would require employers to provide insurance that covered birth control. The bishops conference said that it would be an infringement of religious freedom for Catholic institutions such as colleges or hospitals -- or even an individual Catholic owner of a business as small as a Taco Bell franchise -- to be forced to cover birth control.

More label-heavy paragraphs followed.

Conservative leaders held conferences, drawing into the coalition Mormon leaders and a small showing of Orthodox Jews, Muslims and Sikhs, along with legal advocacy groups, and conservative organizations like the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundation.

....

For years, social conservatives in the state, where statute barred gay people from marrying, had pushed to add an amendment to the State Constitution. Though the state has long leaned conservative, it has a rigorous requirement to change the Constitution -- two votes by separately elected legislatures, then a statewide vote -- and the effort moved slowly.

The Times let supporters of the law have the final word, but make sure to put a rare description of the "left" in quoted material (the word "conservative" need no such quotes but was simply stated as fact).

Conservatives complained that lawmakers had given in to “the radical left.”

“It’s like paying ransom to a captor, and will put people of faith in the cross hairs of gay activists who will use this new legislation as a weapon to force people of faith to participate in same-sex ‘marriage’ ceremonies and other activities that violate their deeply held religious beliefs,” said Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, in a statement. “Refusing to be part of a same-sex ‘wedding’ is not discrimination, but this new legislation treats it as such."