sex education

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

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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.


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All those fast-growing Christian schools: Are they really bastions of racism, intolerance?

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All those fast-growing Christian schools: Are they really bastions of racism, intolerance?

Usually most New York Times’ pieces about anything conservative and (particularly) Christian gets reams of nasty remarks in the comments section. But a recent story on the rapid growth of private Christian schools drew a wider range of constructive responses.

I’m talking about Ruth Graham’s piece about a Christian school in an obscure corner of southwestern Virginia (drive west of Richmond, then head south) and how such schools are booming around the country in the wake of COVID-19 realities.

It’s a trend that a lot of us have seen coming. The key question, for GetReligion readers, is how the story handled the “Why?” factor looming over this trend. We will start at the beginning:

MONETA, Va. — On a sunny Thursday morning in September, a few dozen high school students gathered for a weekly chapel service at what used to be the Bottom’s Up Bar & Grill and is now the chapel and cafeteria of Smith Mountain Lake Christian Academy.

Five years ago, the school in southwestern Virginia had just 88 students between kindergarten and 12th grade. Its finances were struggling, quality was inconsistent by its own admission, and classes met at a local Baptist church.

The Smith Mountain Lake real estate market is the largest marketplace for lake property in Virginia unless you can afford expensive beachfront to the east.

Now, it has 420, with others turned away for lack of space. It has grown to occupy a 21,000-square-foot former mini-mall, which it moved into in 2020, plus two other buildings down the road.

Smith Mountain Lake is benefiting from a boom in conservative Christian schooling, driven nationwide by a combination of pandemic frustrations and rising parental anxieties around how schools handle education on issues including race and the rights of transgender students.

Homes in Franklin County, which includes Smith Mountain Lake, are selling at 35% above assessed value, so people are definitely moving to this exurb because, well, they can.

Everyone is working remote these days and if you don’t HAVE to live near a place like Washington, DC (about a four-hour drive to the north), why would you?


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Colorado's proposed sex ed curriculum: Which religious groups protested it?

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Maybe I’ve been sleeping under a rock recently, but I didn’t realize that half the metro Denver area was abuzz with a proposed sex education curriculum for its public schools.

As I looked at various media accounts, only one religious group — Catholics — stood out as opposing the substantial changes in how Colorado kids would learn about sex. There’s no mention of organized resistance from other groups, even the evangelical behemoth, Focus on the Family, an hour south of Denver.

Here’s the big question: How far into the story do readers need to dig to find out the crucial question here is parental rights, in terms of having the ability to opt out of classes that violate their religious convictions?

We’ll start with the Denver Post’s coverage, then branch out.

After more than 10 hours of debate and the testimony — both written and spoken — of more than 300 people, Democrats on a Colorado House committee approved a sexual education bill shortly before midnight Wednesday.

If it passes the General Assembly, the bill would amend a 2013 law by removing a waiver for public charter schools that lets them pick other sex ed criteria. It would also fund a grant program for schools that lack the resources to teach human sexuality and expand upon the LGBT relationship portion of the curriculum requirements.

The new section on teaching about “healthy relationships” and the “different relationship models” students may encounter appeared to be the touchstone for most of the objections from parents, educators and faith leaders Wednesday. Dozens of speakers told the committee they worry that if the General Assembly passes the bill, school districts will be teaching kids about sexual acts and lifestyles their faith disagrees with.

“If you’re for House Bill 1032, then you’re for exposing 9-year-olds to sexually explicit techniques,” said James Rea, a father of four. “We don’t want to expose our children to this kind of forced sexual education.”

Who are the “faith leaders” involved? One, according to CruxNow, is the Catholic archbishop of Denver. Crux said:


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Teen sex and pregnancy in UK: The Daily Mail and The Times abstain from discussing religion

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“If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it,” argued Ronald Reagan.

A study released last month in Britain reports this maxim is true not only of economics, but sex. 

The Daily Mail, The Times and other outlets report that claims that cutting government spending on sexual education would lead to a rise in teen pregnancy have been shown to be untrue.

Researchers actually discovered the obverse: cutting sex-ed spending leads to a decline in the rate of teen pregnancies. The question GetReligion readers will want answered, of course, is this: Might there be a religious or moral angle to this news story?

The lede in the May 30, 2017, story in The Times entitled “Teenage pregnancies decline as funding for sex education is cut” states: 

Teenage pregnancy rates have been reduced because of government cuts to spending on sex education and birth control for young women, according to a study that challenges conventional wisdom. The state’s efforts to teach adolescents about sex and make access to contraceptives easier may have encouraged risky behavior rather than curbed it, the research suggests.

The Times story is behind their paywall, but the Daily Mail’s version, entitled “Sex education classes DON'T help to curb teenage pregnancy rates and may encourage youngsters to have unprotected intercourse” lays out the same story.

 


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Context, please: About the 'controversial statements' by San Francisco's 'conservative' archbishop

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Hold on for a wild ride because there's breaking news in San Francisco.

Believe it or not, the Roman Catholic archbishop of the City by the Bay is, apparently, Catholic. 

You read it here first. No, I'm kidding. The San Francisco Chronicle actually broke the news:

The conservative Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco has developed a new document for Catholic high school faculty and staff clarifying that sex outside of marriage, homosexual relations, the viewing of pornography and masturbation are “gravely evil.”
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s document applies to faculty and staff at four Catholic high schools: Riordan and Sacred Heart in San Francisco, Marin Catholic in Kentfield and Serra High School in San Mateo. It states that administrators, faculty and staff “affirm and believe” the controversial statements, which will be part of the faculty handbook.

So right away, the Chronicle makes clear that Cordileone is both "conservative" and making "controversial statements." 

What makes the archbishop "conservative?" His "controversial" beliefs, apparently.


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How not to cover a Bible Belt sex-education debate

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Let’s assume that many if not most professionals in an elite newsroom in Southern California — The Los Angeles Times, perhaps — will be tempted to believe that they know more about sex than most parents and educators in the Bible Belt state of Mississippi. Safe assumption? My goal here is not to settle that question, so please do not click “comment” just yet.

If the leaders of this newspaper decided to write a news feature on sex education in Mississippi, I would assume that they would know, from the get-go, that they would need to go out of their way to quote the voices of articulate, qualified people in Mississippi on both sides of this hot-button issue. After all, journalists committed to journalism would never think of imposing their own beliefs and values on, let’s say, people in radically different cultures overseas, cultures built in part on other religions such as Islam or Hinduism. Right?

Ironically, the journalists in this case study face a challenge that is very similar to the one faced by Mississippi educators — they are trying to find a way for committed believers with clashing views to be heard in the same forum. One group is trying to mix clashing voices in classrooms, while the other is trying to do balanced, accurate, fair-minded journalism in a major newspaper.


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