In Indiana, the lawyer of a mother charged with severely beating her seven-year-old son has claimed that she was following Christian teachings and is thus protected from prosecution by the state’s version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). While this argument lacks any legal merit and is unlikely to convince a judge, some media outlets have seized upon it as grounds on which to object to RFRA and other such laws. Mark Hemingway explains the tendentiousness of this line of reporting:
I suspect providing an accurate understanding of what RFRA laws are was not what the coverage of [the Indiana mother’s] spurious defense was about. . . . Progressive activists, and their abundant allies in the media, clearly want people to perceive religious-freedom laws as being invoked only by scoundrels. They simply hate the idea that RFRA laws could possibly be used successfully to defend Christian pharmacists who don’t want to prescribe abortifacients or Christian grandmothers who serve gay customers but draw the line at providing floral arrangements for gay weddings. . . .
[A]ccurate reporting on RFRA laws might make readers sympathetic to them. Instead, major publications are disingenuously presenting the facts to make it sound as if “religious freedom” is a credible defense of child abusers. [T]hat’s a stunning indictment of the media.
Read more on Weekly Standard: http://www.weeklystandard.com/dont-believe-the-media-religious-freedom-laws-dont-protect-child-abusers/article/2004142