Religion

Damon Root at the Hit & Run blog at Reason.com has an excellent post today taking the New York Times to task for its hypocrisy on the question of free-speech rights for corporations. 

Christianity’s tent is not big enough to accommodate both the supporters of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act and Brittney Cooper, who in a Wednesday piece for Salon blasted both the state’s pre-fix RFRA and the religious right in general. “This kind of legislation is rooted in a politics that gives white people the authority to police and terrorize people of color, queer people and…

Here's some helpful advice for newsroom assignment editors and TV producers: put Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in your address book for the next time a controversy erupts regarding a state's religious-freedom protection laws. 

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo has aggressively attacked those who support Indiana's religious freedom law and on Thursday night he brought on Charles Barkley to slime Christians as "religious nuts." The former NBA player, who is from Alabama originally, sneered, "All these rednecks hide behind the Bible. That's what they do. That's one of the reason the south is behind in everything. They always hide…

Update, April 3: The Indiana man who claims to have been hacked now admits that he wasn't, but says he was "joking" about robbing Memories Pizza, and is threatening to sue those who exposed his (ahem) public comments.  Those of us following the Memories Pizza story won't have trouble remembering it as the years go by, thanks only partially to the Walkerton, Indiana store's fairly unusual name…

Facts don't matter when the media and gay activists believe they can find an issue that stirs controversy and advances their cause.

Two days ago I noted how Hardball host Chris Matthews slandered Catholic nuns in Indiana as bigots who want to deprive gay Americans of their rights. Tonight, the evening of Holy Thursday, Matthews was not as explicit or as strident in language, but he did hint that the nuns who appeared with Gov. Mike Pence at his signing ceremony for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act earlier this week were …

A short unbylined Associated Press report at its national site on the situation at Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana this afternoon made sure to mention that the pizzeria "won't cater gay weddings" (in the headline). It also misstated the owner's statement to a South Bend TV station, claiming, using its own words, that she "said the state's new religious objections law backs their right to…

CNN's Gary Tuchman condescended towards Christian florists in rural Georgia on Wednesday's Anderson Cooper 360 over their religious-based stance against participating in homosexual "commitment ceremonies," as the state hasn't legalized same-sex "marriage" yet. Tuchman used the Bible as a club against two female employees: "The Bible talks an awful lot about love and loving your fellow man....You'…

CNN's Wolf Blitzer utilized a regular liberal media double standard on Wednesday's AC360: giving a liberal guest the kid glove treatment, while tossing tougher questions at a conservative – in this case, Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist website. When Hemingway underlined how Religious Freedom Restoration Acts have protected Sikhs and Native Americans, Blitzer countered,  "But Mollie, you're…

Appearing on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday night, Nina Burleigh of Newsweek crudely joked that Republicans who defended Pence and Indiana’s Religious Freedom Act were experiencing “premature intolerance ejaculation.” 

On Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Scott Pelley devoted a few moments after a news brief on the Iran deal negotiations to explaining the centuries-long divide between the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam and, in the process, also took time to reflect on President Barack Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo. After noting that the negotiations are taking place “against a backdrop of a disintegrating…

Following five straight days where the network evening newscasts slammed Indiana for passing its Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Arkansas joined the barrage of criticism on Wednesday after Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson requested the legislature make changes to its own version. The CBS Evening News failed to mention how a small Indiana pizza parlor has been forced to at least…

Something hasn't seemed right about the Memories Pizza story from the get-go. Now I know why. In a Tuesday report, TV Station ABC 57 cited the Walkerton, Indiana business's Crystal O'Connor as saying that, in the station's words, they "don't agree with gay marriages and wouldn't cater them if asked to." In other words, they've never been asked to. The non-story which ignited a national firestorm…