Chase Out the Fundies

IN RECENT weeks two lesbian journalists at the San Francisco Chronicle were taken off of the same-sex marriage beat by Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein because they had gotten married themselves, albeit in a private ceremony with only a few friends present. Jay Blotcher, a gay stringer for the New York Times, was dismissed by Times editors after they learned he'd been a public relations spokesperson for the AIDS groups ACT UP and did some work for the American Foundation for AIDS Research-10 years ago!

Never mind that many Times staff reporters over the years were p.r. flacks before joining the team. Never mind that Botcher wasn't covering AIDS or public health for the Times. In response to a blistering letter from playwright Larry Kramer pointing out the many conflicts of Times health editor Dr. Lawrence Altman and other Times reporters, editor Bill Keller said, "Although [Blotcher] is no longer in that role, his work was recent enough that we worry he is identified in the public mind as an advocate."

If these cases represent conflicts of interest-or even the appearance of such-what are we to make of the Los Angeles Times' Roy Rivenburg, who covers the same-sex marriage movement though he is associated with a radical evangelical Christian organization?

"Not everyone who opposes gay marriage is a Bible-thumper, a conservative-or even a heterosexual," Rivenburg, identified under his byline as a "Times staff writer," reported on March 13. "As the California Supreme Court stepped into the feud Thursday by halting same-sex nuptials in San Francisco, other voices were already weighing in against the idea? Some profess enthusiastic support for gay rights, including civil unions, but they draw the line at marriage. One reason is a belief that gay matrimony could open the door to legalizing polygamy and group marriage."

That smelled awfully funny to me. Sure, lots of people oppose same-sex marriage-a majority of Americans in most polls-but the sentiment reveals a general discomfort with redefining marriage, something new and jarring to most people. A fear of the door being "open" to polygamy, however, is the blather of Sen. Rick Santorum and his ilk. Without any empirical data, and hiding behind the mantle of objectivity, any reporter with an agenda can bolster a phenomenon by quoting a few people backing him up. Only a reporter (or his editors) who harbors deep religious concerns about gay marriage and wants to sway public opinion would have an interest in claiming that non-religious people were as concerned as the devout. Throwing out the polygamy canard in this light-a particularly offensive, nasty bit of fear-mongering-is manipulative.

Another effective strategy would be to soften the backgrounds of some of the people quoted. In his piece, Rivenburg quotes columnist Kathleen Parker, whom he describes as "a Florida newspaper columnist who 'loves gays'" but nonetheless opposes same-sex marriage. Yet, though Parker may hide behind the old "some of my best friends are?" phrase, anyone who examines her work will soon realize she's just another Christian moralist whose columns appear on right-wing websites like TownHall.com.

Parker opines that "it is irrefutable that Nature had a well-ordered design" for heterosexuality and warns about the "gargantuan leap from a natural order that has served mankind throughout civilized human society," sounding every bit like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. She may "love" gays when they do her hair, or when they're on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, but she certainly doesn't believe these swishy types are her equals.

"One minute we were enjoying Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, watching a gaggle of giggly fashion boys transform frumpy straight men into metrosexuals," she wrote in one recent column. "Next thing we knew, San Francisco's City Hall looked like a Moonie wedding chapel."

Rivenburg ends his piece with Parker's admonitions that "the stakes are too high to remain silent," a line that pretty much sums up what Rivenburg himself is trying to convey with his article.

Why would Rivenburg be pushing an agenda in his reporting? Let's look at the website of the World Journalism Institute, where Rivenburg is listed as a "guest faculty" member. ^^^ "In this age of mass secular media, the mission of the World Journalism Institute is to overcome the culture's efforts to eclipse God by providing a counter-thrust to the secular media, as well as the tepid and non-discerning Christian media," the institute's site reads. "By helping train aspiring Biblically-minded journalists, WJI can lift the spiritually impoverished public to the renewing grace of God, and to this end we must press our unwilling materialistic-naturalistic newsroom culture itself into the strategic service of the universal and unrelenting claims of the Lord of the cosmos."

Responding to some questions I emailed him, Rivenburg, whose Columbia University master's thesis about modern exorcism was titled "Deliverance From the Devil," attempted to distance himself from WJI.

"I'm not sure that listing me as an instructor for a five-hour feature-writing seminar necessarily implies that I'm an evangelical Christian [I'm Catholic] or endorse all of their philosophies," Rivenburg said. "But I have, in the past, thought about asking them not to put me on their website. Maybe I should reconsider that."

If he doesn't agree with the institute's philosophy, why would he lend his name and reputation to it? Why would he work for it at all?

"It's not like I'm doing ads or cover blurbs for them," he responded. "I simply agreed to teach a seminar on feature writing and they've listed me as one of their instructors, which I am." (Rivenburg told the LA Observed website last week that though he didn't fully agree with WJI, it did offer a "generous" fee and that a friend told him to "give it a whirl.")

As for his own position on same-sex marriage, Rivenburg prefers to stay in the closet, even as his association with WJI seems to have outed his leanings.

"When I wrote about the presidential race in 2000, it would have been unprofessional for me to publicly discuss my political beliefs or voting record," he said. "Likewise, I think it's unprofessional for me to publicly discuss my personal views on this topic."

Rivenburg, who says his editors assigned him the same-sex marriage piece (an example, perhaps, of bias or carelessness on their part), often writes opinionated political and cultural humor columns for the L.A. Times, which raises the question of why he can't offer me a position on same-sex marriage. It's interesting that he takes on the mantle of objective reporter when he's writing about issues important to Christian fundamentalists, such as his pieces on so-called partial birth abortion and how Hugh Hefner brought us the era of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases.

If Big Media is going to stop gay journalists who get married from covering the same-sex marriage movement, shouldn't it be clamping down on reporters and editors aiding and abetting a hidden Christian right agenda as well?