Press quiet as a mouse when it comes to Catholic angles in this Disney-DeSantis fight

I was never nuts for Disney. I’ve never been to one of their a theme park, either as a child or now as a parent of two children, and never indulged in their movies much over my lifetime. I’ll freely admit that puts me in the minority, both in the United States and around the world, when it comes to Disney consumption.

I was, however, once a Disney employee. No, I didn’t work in one of their stores. Instead, I was employed at ABC News in New York, where I worked for their digital unit running the website and other internet assets such as social media. It was a great place to work — although not “The Happiest Place On Earth” as the official tagline for Disneyland states. It was, after all, a newsroom — but one of the perks was free tickets each year to their amusement parks.

I say all this in the context of the ongoing feud regarding the Florida “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which is now law after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it. This is the much-discussed bill that bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade “in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

The law continues to get media coverage for two reasons. First, because of Disney’s involvement and second due to the larger notion that DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, is — everyone chant the media mantra — “engaging in a culture war.” This remains a political story, a business story and a pop culture story.

Is this also an important religion story? It certainly is (tmatt takes on this very topic in GetReligion’s most recent podcast).

My most recent GetReligion post focused on the news media’s largely ignoring the Republican DeSantis’ Catholic faith in regard to the widespread news coverage around the bill, which opponents effectively labeled “Don’t Say Gay” even though the bill never used those words.

At the same time, the news coverage for conservative press around the legislation has centered much more on Disney’s late-in-the-game activism in opposing it. The coverage among mainstream and progressive news sites continues to center on that activist “Don’t Say Gay” mantra.

It doesn't take a graduate degree in family-life studies or anything like that to be able to spot the religion ghost in this week's think piece.

In fact, author Nicholas H. Wolfinger of the Institute for Family Studies finally points it out, over half way through this short piece on the institute's website. The headline: "Sex in Red and Blue America."

Frankly, I thought the headline on this one would attract some press coverage, especially since it (a) is about sex, (b) is framed in terms of politics and (c) it's a perfect topic for those trendy lifestyles and features sections that seem to run ANYTHING that pushes buttons about (a) and (b).

So I have kept this think piece stashed away for a few weeks, figuring that I would eventually see mainstream news coverage of some of the hot-button material in it.

Guess what? I haven't seen anything. Have you? Ready for some of the steamy details? Here is a solid slice of core info:

... Republicans have more sex than Democrats and cheat less on their spouses. Political independents have sex even more often than Republicans but cheat at the same rate Democrats do. Republican sexual frequency is entirely explained by the fact that they’re more likely to be married than are Democrats. On the other hand, there’s no obvious explanation for the partisan difference in adultery.

Really now? Can anyone thing of some rather obvious statistical differences between people in red-state, flyover country and the power elites who are at the heart of the modern Democratic party?

At the center of the study is lots of data -- 25 years worth -- from the omnibus General Social Survey. The question isn't perfect, but it's blunt: “About how often did you have sex during the last 12 months?” Yes, that has lots of loopholes. Just ask Bill Clinton.

So why are the Republicans and red-zip-code people having sex more often than the folks whose lives get made into steamy novels, movies and pop songs?

Hint: It's time to start looking for religion-news ghosts.