A Times news article under the headline "Boy Scouts Are Poised to End Ban on Gay Leaders" reports, "To gain the acquiescence of conservative religious groups that sponsor many packs and troops, like the Mormon and Roman Catholic Churches, the policy will allow church-run units to pick leaders who agree with their moral precepts."
So to the New York Times the Roman Catholic Church amounts to a "conservative religious group." Have the newspaper's reporters and editors been following their own coverage about Pope Francis's campaign against global warming and income inequality, about his assistance in the reconciliation between the governments of the United States and Communist Cuba, about the church's opposition to the death penalty, its support for the labor movement, its advocacy of comprehensive immigration reform and its support for welfare spending?
A reference to "the National Jewish Committee on Scouting" appears in the article without any sweeping statements about Jewish political liberalism or conservatism. This is one of those cases where the Times is so biased that it's comical. Whenever reporters and editors feel the need to slap the "conservative" political label on a think tank, a church, or an an organization, they'd be better off stopping, taking a deep breath, and asking themselves: is this group really "conservative" by the standards of the rest of America, or just by the standards of the Upper West Side (or brownstone Brooklyn, or Montclair, N.J.) liberals in the New York Times newsroom? And if they really are "conservative," is the label necessary, or can Times readers figure it out for themselves? And if the label is really necessary, are the liberal groups in the story labeled the same way? It drives me nuts!