Newsrooms want so badly to believe that religious conservatives have a seething, unquenchable hatred for gay people that the press is creating drama and feuds where none seem to exist.
CNN, for example, published an attention-grabbing opinion piece, technically an “analysis,” on Thursday titled, “Pete Buttigieg, a gay Christian, is driving the religious right nuts.”
With a headline such as that, the reader is right to expect that the accompanying article will include a litany of examples showing the religious Right has a decidedly noncharitable view of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Surely the CNN article provides examples spanning the whole, vast, and diverse array of various faith factions and traditions that make up the religious Right.
Nope.
No such litany of examples is provided by the article’s author, CNN Politics digital director Zachary Wolf. In fact, the only proof that the religious Right is being driven “nuts” by Buttigieg is three tweets from Franklin Graham, who is not a fan of the mayor.
As a card-carrying member of the religious Right, I can say with confidence that Graham does not speak for me. I can also say he does not speak for the whole of religious conservatism. To be fair, the CNN article itself hedges by saying that “some” on the “religious right” see Buttigieg as an anomaly — again, it quotes only Graham. But that “some,” which is doing a lot of heavy lifting, justifies neither the headline nor the story’s reason to exist. We are told that Buttigieg is driving the religious Right “nuts.” We are then told that Buttigieg’s existence as a gay Christian “does not compute” for “some on the religious right.” What sensational drama! We are then given a single example of what the headline and the body of the story allege. This is nonsense.
Now, it would be one thing if this CNN article existed in a vacuum. But we keep seeing this from our national media. Newsrooms keep asserting, without evidence, that the religious Right and members of the LGBT community are engaged constantly in an extraordinary struggle, where the former is portrayed as the perpetually aggrieved and flummoxed and the latter as the undaunted challengers of oppression.
In 2018, for example, newsrooms hyped a supposed war of words between Vice President Mike Pence and gay Olympic skater Adam Rippon. The New York Times ran a headline that read: “Mike Pence Tangles With Olympian Adam Rippon Over Gay Rights Record.” USA Today even claimed the vice president had “backed down” after being put in his place by the skater. In reality, Rippon was the one doing all the talking. He repeated the baseless assertion that the vice president supports gay conversion therapy, which Pence’s office denied. The vice president invited Rippon to the White House to discuss the matter. The skater declined. So, an athlete lied about Pence, Pence invited him to talk about it, and the press painted it as the vice president “tangling” and “back[ing] down.” Baffling.
More recently, newsrooms tried to build up a supposed “feud” between Pence and Buttigieg over the issue that the former is a Christian and the latter is a married gay man. But like the Rippon story, the Pence/Buttigieg “fight” is also a matter of one person doing all the talking (that person being Buttigieg).
Pro tip: It is not a dispute or even an argument if only one side participates.
I understand that we are in the era of reality TV politics, and newsrooms love a good spectacle to drive clicks and eyeballs. But let us at least have something to back up the juicy drama we promise readers with our headlines.
