Before the Rev. Bill McElvaney had George Harris and Jack Evans exchange rings and have them do “whatever public display of affection you’re comfortable with,” he didn’t ask, “If anyone knows any reason these two people should not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
However, CBS-11 found someone to object.
All of the other Dallas television stations did a pretty good job of reporting the Evans-Harris wedding that took place at Midway Hills Christian Church on Saturday.
KXAS-TV Channel 5, the NBC affiliate, got the churches wrong. They reported that Evans and Harris had asked a number of churches to perform their wedding, and Northaven United Methodist was the first to say yes.
Actually, Harris and Evans are longtime members of Northaven. That church couldn’t perform the wedding because of the denomination’s ban on same-sex marriages.
The Rev. Arthur Stewart of Midway Hills Christian Church agreed to host the wedding at his church. In the NBC story, Stewart is identified as a pastor at Northaven.
But other than not knowing where they were or who belonged to what church, NBC did a good job reporting the wedding.
Then there was CBS.
In their reporting, reporters go for balance. Dallas City Council on Wednesday approved a resolution that will move the city toward offering to employees in same-sex marriages the benefits available to employees in opposite-sex marriages. Balance means finding someone against equality for gay employees and presenting that point of view — like Dallas Councilman
Sheffie Kadane who thinks those rights should just go to everyone. Or a story about development in a neighborhood — there are those who want to preserve architectural history and those who argue for progress.
But what is there to balance in reporting a funeral or a wedding?
In my reporting on the death of Jerry Falwell, I wrote, “My mother taught me if I can’t say something good about a person, don’t say anything at all. He’s dead. Good.”
Of course, I was trying to be rude. Is that what CBS was going for?
In the stereotypical TV wedding, the officiant asks, “If anyone knows a reason these two people should not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
CBS found someone — the Rev. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas.
And speak he did. Twice. On a report the day before the wedding and on a piece after the ceremony.
Northaven’s pastor Eric Folkerth found it offensive on several counts.
Why did the Baptist minister chime in on a story about Folkerth’s Methodist church? If “balance” was what CBS was looking for, at least a Methodist minister in Dallas could have commented about going against the Methodist Book of Discipline. There were a few dozen Methodist ministers at the wedding, but none of them would have given the CBS reporters the “balanced” comments they were looking for.
Why did CBS find the need to “balance” a story about a wedding anyway? Was it the 53-year relationship between Harris and Evans that offended the news editor? Was it the couple’s decades-long membership in this North Dallas Methodist church that offended someone at CBS? Or was it a desire to throw cold water on a congregation’s celebration Folkerth called the happiest event at Northaven in years.
Jeffers’ comments related more to last week’s ruling in San Antonio by Judge Orlando Garcia declaring Texas’ anti-marriage amendment unconstitutional. Was his piece tacked on to the wedding story because CBS can only do one gay item in a week? The two stories were only marginally related.
In the San Antonio case, the judge made a ruling related to civil marriage that the unconstitutional practice of passing a law based on animus toward a group is unconstitutional. The interview with Jeffress proved the accuracy of that decision as he spewed anti-gay animus on the air.
The Northaven religious wedding story was about a controversy rocking the Methodist Church. The very nature of that denomination is that all of its churches must follow all of the same practices. Either all perform same-sex weddings or none do. Unlike Midway Hills Christian Church, a member of Disciples of Christ, Methodist congregations or clergy can’t decide if they’d like to perform weddings at Northaven but not perform them at Highland Park United Methodist.
And, finally, Folkerth is annoyed that CBS-11 doesn’t come to him or any other progressive clergy to solicit their opinions every time a story on First Baptist runs.
Hey, last year First Baptist opened a beautiful new facility in Downtown Dallas. Why didn’t CBS ask members of another denomination for their thoughts on the construction? Because it’s not the Methodist Church’s business how big or expensive the Baptists’ new church is.
It’s also not the Baptists’ business who the Methodists decide should marry. Jeffress is free to have any religious belief he wants, but to intrude into another faith’s beliefs is unconscionable. And the news editor at CBS-11 should be able to discern when someone’s opinion on a story his station is running is relevant — or not.
David Taffet is a staff writer at Dallas Voice. He can be reached at taffet@dallasvoice.com
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition March 7, 2014.