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!