The story: A priest works at a Miami high school as a history teacher and assistant chaplain. Nude photographs of him interacting physically with other men are discovered on the Internet. The priest resigns from his job. Graphic Internet photos are readily available for the media.
In light of the recent media frenzy over Rev. Ted Haggard (5,500 results at Google News), it sounds like everything would be ripe for a story that the media would just love to jump all over. But, curiously, the mainstream media has essentially ignored this story. Why?
The answer may lie in the priest's denomination. Here's the story. You see, Rev. Parry is not a Catholic priest. He's not even a pastor from one of those conservative Evangelical churches. Rev Parry is a priest of the increasingly liberal Episcopal Church in the USA.
When the Episcopal Church recently elected a woman bishop, the media celebrated the event. (Right now (11/11/06) at Google News, "katharine schori episcopal" yields over 1000 results.) The 2003 election of openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop was very widely covered. Many Episcopalians are supporting same-sex "marriage"; women priests are allowed; Episcopal priests can be married; abortion is accepted among many. (Bishop Gene Robinson spoke at Planned Parenthood's 2005 "Prayer Breakfast.")
An unfiltered search at Google News for "Adrian Parry" (the name of the priest) returns a miniscule five results from two media outlets in the entire world (that appear on Google). (Three results are the same source, the Miami Herald; one is the story itself and the other two are letters to the editor in reaction to the scandal. The fourth is an online site covering news in the Episcopal/Anglican world which reprinted the Miami Herald piece. A fifth: A local TV station in Miami covered the story. (A sixth result is a story from the UK involving a man who happens to have the same name.))
Is there honestly any doubt at all that this story would receive a lot more media attention if this had been a Catholic priest or a conservative Evangelical pastor?
File under: Double standard!
