The Gaines Brouhaha, Buzzfeed's Gift to the Religious Right's Martyr-Making Machinery

[rug]

Chip and Joanna Gaines, courtesy HGTV, which has stated: “We don’t discriminate against members of the LGBT community in any of our shows. HGTV is proud to have a crystal clear, consistent record of including people from all walks of life in its series.”

BY PETER MONTGOMERY
DECEMBER 1, 2016

The religious right is quick to manufacture martyrs, so it’s unfortunate when progressive journalists hand them ammunition, as Buzzfeed did on Tuesday with an article under the headline “Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Church is Firmly Against Same-Sex Marriage.”

One of the Christian right’s go-to political strategies has always been to portray Christians in America as victims of religious persecution—with religious freedom on the verge of being snuffed out. Any criticism of the political agendas, tactics or rhetoric of televangelists and political operatives is declared an attack on religious freedom and faith itself.

The right has made hay for more than two decades out of a line in a 1993 Washington Post story that should never have gotten by an editor. It called religious right activists “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.” Under a flood of criticism, the paper ran a correction the next day, but conservative Christians have gotten a lot of media- and liberal-attacking mileage out of it.

And now there’s this week’s comment-storm in the wake of what has been named a “hit piece.”

http://religiondispatches.org/the-gaines-brouhaha-buzzfeeds-gift-to-the-religious-rights-martyr-making-machinery/

[Dr Hobbitstein]

1. Bunch of bigoted assholes.

Fuck them and the religious right they rode in on.

[nil desperandum]

2. Well now,

Buzzfeed ran a crappy story...I'd like to say I'm surprised but clearly a story about two people's membership in a church that fails to actually talk to the two people in question is nothing new for lousy news outlets, if Buzzfeed can even be called a news outlet.

I've seen this show on HGTV and from the episodes I've seen I don't even know if these people go to church, maybe I've missed the shows where they proselytize to the masses instead of showing how they take crappy houses and make them into decent homes for people with limited budgets.

[rug]

3. Yeah, this whole thing looks manufactured.