Thursday, June 29, 2006

Herald Slurs Rabbi

A double tip of the toupee to Alfredo for drawing our attention to the Boston Herald's inattention. Their recap of yesterday's religious grandstanding lumped a very pro-SSM rabbi with the O'Malley/Romney axis of imposing narrow religious views on civil contract law.

The picture they used had the cutline:
Rabbi Daniel Judson (reform jewish) of Temple Beth David in Canton speaks to media against gay marriage.
Not only are reform rabbis not about imposing religion on whole cultures, Rabbi Judson is in favor of equality in general and same-sex marriage rights in particular.

I also suspect that he'd rather see Reform Jewish than reform jewish too. I've never seen the Herald cite the roman catholic church.

Afredo cites the temple's Website bio of the rabbi, including:
Rabbi Judson has a passionate commitment to social justice work which he shares with the congregation. In 2005, Rabbi Judson was presented the Signer's Award at the Massachusetts State House from the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry, for his efforts to ensure the right to marry for gays and lesbians. He organized 100 Rabbis to sign an ad in the Boston Globe in support of gay and lesbian marriage. While a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College he served as the director for three years of the HUC Soup Kitchen which serves 200 meals a week to New York City's hungry and homeless. He is proud of the social justice work that the Temple has undertaken during his tenure, especially the work done with United Homes, a shelter in Dorchester for homeless men.

Update: As Ron noted (see comments), the Herald corrected its boner.
Tags: , , , , ,

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know what the printed caption said, but the online one now reads: "Rabbi Daniel Judson of Temple Beth David in Canton speaks to media. (File)"

massmarrier said...

Perhaps some readers, or the rabbi, took them to task. The caption above was exactly what appeared under the picture.

Now I wonder what else they'll do with it. The rabbi's picture -- with other pro-SSM clergy -- is still the only illustration online with this. However, none of those in the image is quoted in the accompanying article. Also, neither Romney nor O'Malley appears. Finally, the cutline "Rabbi Daniel Judson of Temple Beth David in Canton speaks to media." and the juxtaposition of the picture with this story still associates the rabbi with the anti-SSM folk.

Is this just clumsiness or a deliberate confusion for readers?

massmarrier said...

By the bye, Adam over at Universal Hub has a cap of the original.

Now, will they change this pic to a relevant one, or identify him as a pro-SSM speaker, or explain what they are doing with this? It's not like they don't have images of Romney or O'Malley.

Maybe they find the nasties just too hard to look at. ;-P