For most major news organizations, accuracy often takes a back seat to ideology, which is why groups such as the Associated Press are mischaracterizing Tennessee’s new religious liberty bill as “anti-gay.”
The legislation in question allows faith-based foster and adoptive groups to receive taxpayer funds even if they decline to work with members of the LGBT community. The bill ensures that religious organizations won’t also be asked to violate their convictions to receive public funding. It is the same basic principle behind the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was signed into law in 1993 by President Bill Clinton.
For the Associated Press and others, however, Tennessee’s new bill, which Republican Gov. Bill Lee announced this week that he would sign into law, is “anti-gay.”
“Tennessee governor says he will sign anti-LGBT adoption bill,” the group reported this week in an article shared by several major news organizations, including the Huffington Post and NBC News.
Tennessee governor says he will sign anti-gay adoption billhttps://t.co/i8uGFHYghy
— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 15, 2020
The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Paul Rose, noted the measure is essentially the same thing as the Trump administration’s directive protecting faith-based groups from having to violate their religious convictions to receive public funding. Rose explained in remarks to the Associated Press, however, that he felt it was necessary to get those protections enshrined in state law given that there is no guarantee President Trump will win reelection in 2020.
Never mind all that, says the nation’s leading news organizations. The people need to know that Tennessee’s governor is ready to sign an “anti-gay” bill.
“Anti-LGBT adoption bill heads to Tennessee governor,” declared the headline in PBS’s cross-post of the Associated Press’s report.
“Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says he will sign anti-LGBT adoption bill,” said Yahoo! News.
The Tennessean, which is part of the USA Today network, published a story originally titled, “Senate passes anti-LGBT adoption bill.”
And so on.
The bill does not represent an attempt by the state to deny members of the LGBT community the opportunity to adopt, despite what the news headlines suggest. The bill allows only for faith-based organizations to receive public funding without also asking them to violate their religious convictions. To the national news media, however, “religious liberty” is the same thing as “anti-gay.”
