Prediction of Misrepresentation
I haven't done my review of the news and blogosphere yet, so I could be wrong on this.
I listened to Focus on the Family this morning, and apparently there are two sets of protesters outside their offices. One is a homosexual group who refused to participate in a forum about their disagreements with Focus on the Family, preferring instead to create a one-sided media event.
This, by itself, isn't a big deal. People protest all kinds of things, and often to intentionally distort the debate in their favor.
What is a problem is the second protest group. What they are is as mean-sprited a group as the first. They are a group of anti-homosexuality protestors led by the "reverend" Fred Phelps. This is the joker who leads groups with signs that say, "God hates fags." To quote Dr. Dobson from this morning, "No He doesn't! God loves us all...heteroesexual sex outside of marriage and homosexual sex are both wrong, but God calls us to Him in love."
What is my prediction? Phelp's group will be called by most media outlets (and definitely the left side of the blogosphere) as "pro-Focus protestors", when they don't represent FOTF and conservative Christians any more than the KKK represents white people. I'll return to update this as my prediction is proven correct or incorrect.
UPDATE 1: Here is the Denver Post's preview of the event.
My favorite quote by "gay minister Mel White"?
"Dobson has become the primary source of misinformation about gay and lesbian people in the world," White said. "He is single-handedly doing more damage to truth than anyone else, in our opinion.
"I say he's the most dangerous man in America right now."
Just before BusHitler, that is. Anyhow, the Post does a reasonably fair job of telling who the protestors are. The coverage is very one sided, with the gay activists receiving 80% of the article.
UPDATE 2: The DenverChannel.com also properly discern who the protestors are. Like the Post, they give the gay group the benefit of the doubt (the arrested protestors are "two parents and their gay son" whereas a spokeswoman for Focus merely "describes herself as a former lesbian". Why wasn't the son a "self-described" gay man? Anyway, this one had a decent quote from Focus along witht he standard 80% given to the gay activists:
"We ask Mel White, 'Does his tolerance extend to people who want to put homosexuality behind them?' Mel White says 'No.' That's our basic disagreement."
There's the rub.
I listened to Focus on the Family this morning, and apparently there are two sets of protesters outside their offices. One is a homosexual group who refused to participate in a forum about their disagreements with Focus on the Family, preferring instead to create a one-sided media event.
This, by itself, isn't a big deal. People protest all kinds of things, and often to intentionally distort the debate in their favor.
What is a problem is the second protest group. What they are is as mean-sprited a group as the first. They are a group of anti-homosexuality protestors led by the "reverend" Fred Phelps. This is the joker who leads groups with signs that say, "God hates fags." To quote Dr. Dobson from this morning, "No He doesn't! God loves us all...heteroesexual sex outside of marriage and homosexual sex are both wrong, but God calls us to Him in love."
What is my prediction? Phelp's group will be called by most media outlets (and definitely the left side of the blogosphere) as "pro-Focus protestors", when they don't represent FOTF and conservative Christians any more than the KKK represents white people. I'll return to update this as my prediction is proven correct or incorrect.
UPDATE 1: Here is the Denver Post's preview of the event.
My favorite quote by "gay minister Mel White"?
"Dobson has become the primary source of misinformation about gay and lesbian people in the world," White said. "He is single-handedly doing more damage to truth than anyone else, in our opinion.
"I say he's the most dangerous man in America right now."
Just before BusHitler, that is. Anyhow, the Post does a reasonably fair job of telling who the protestors are. The coverage is very one sided, with the gay activists receiving 80% of the article.
UPDATE 2: The DenverChannel.com also properly discern who the protestors are. Like the Post, they give the gay group the benefit of the doubt (the arrested protestors are "two parents and their gay son" whereas a spokeswoman for Focus merely "describes herself as a former lesbian". Why wasn't the son a "self-described" gay man? Anyway, this one had a decent quote from Focus along witht he standard 80% given to the gay activists:
"We ask Mel White, 'Does his tolerance extend to people who want to put homosexuality behind them?' Mel White says 'No.' That's our basic disagreement."
There's the rub.
posted by Hammertime at
5/02/2005 09:26:00 AM
2 Comments:
My prediction is that the media will realize what a horrible person he is. He's shown up at my church before, and sets up camp regularly at the city's Pride Parade, and the media around here mostly ignore him. They realize, I think, that he's just looking for attention and that the best thing to do is ignore him and hope he goes away. Hopefully they'll do that in this case.
By
Anonymous, at 5/02/2005 10:28:00 AM
I wish they'd ignore him here, too, LC. Unfortunately, he gets front page shots in the paper. While you and I disagree on some things, we both know that he is defintely not on our team!
By
Hammertime, at 5/02/2005 10:49:00 AM
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