Misinformation, disinformation,
exaggerations, lies, darn lies, statistics, etc.
on the Internet related to religion, morality,
ethics, human sexuality, and culture.

Provide only their own assessment of the topic while remaining silent about alternate views. For example, some websites teach that homosexuality is defined as a behavior that is chosen, abnormal, unnatural, changeable and intrinsically disordered. They ignore conclusions reached by all the major psychiatric, psychologist, counseling professional agencies, etc. that homosexuality is an orientation that is discovered, normal and natural for a minority of adults, fixed in adulthood, and not a disorder or mental illness. Without open dialogue, these two belief systems will continue to exist even if neither side is totally correct.
 

Ignore contradictory evidence that shows their opinions to be false, or at least suspect. For example, some religious websites promote the belief that Post Abortion Syndrome (PAS) -- a major depression triggered in women who have terminated a pregnancy with an abortion -- is a very common phenomenon. Again, mental health professional organizations have studied PAS and found that it is rare. One side is certainly wrong. Although there would seem to be an obligation on both sides to find out where the truth lies, again there does not seem to be any active dialogue.
 

Emphasize part of the news, while simply not reporting other parts. One example is a TV ad prepared by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). NOM is the main national group attempting to prevent loving committed same-sex couples from marrying. It included an actor saying: ""I am part of a New Jersey church group punished by the government because we cannot support same-sex marriage." The ad is referring to the Ocean Grove Boardwalk Pavilion who received state and federal funding on the basis that it would remain a "public accommodation" -- providing a location for marriage and civil union ceremonies for the entire public. NOM didn't mention that the owners of the pavilion -- a Methodist group -- had refused a lesbian couple permission to hold their civil union because of the owner's religious beliefs. This violated the contract with the two levels of government, and the church group's tax exempt status was revoked. The solution in this case would be for a fact checking group to evaluate the accuracy of this and similar ads. That group would have to have a conservative political and religious position in order to be accepted by religious and social conservatives.

Explain the news in a way that often leads a reader to assume that something happened other than what really occurred. For example, many web sites prominently display two large numbers: the number of abortions performed annually by Planned Parenthood and the total federal taxpayer dollars that went to Planned Parenthood each year. The two numbers are unrelated to each other because no federal funding goes to perform abortions. But visitors were expected to jump to the incorrect conclusion that all the federal money went to fund Planned Parenthood's abortion program which totals about 3% of the services that they make available. Again, the solution would be for a conservative fact checking group to evaluate these web sites.
 

Reporting information from other news source's without prior fact checking. For example, an evangelical Christian author who believes in a young earth misunderstood the nature of the "leap second" -- a timekeeping adjustment that adjusts for the continual deceleration of the earth's rotation. His invalid calculations indicated that if the earth coalesced 4.5 billion years ago as estimated by many different scientific methods, it would have been rotating so fast back then that it would have flattened like a pancake. In spite many scientific websites that pointed out the error in the author's calculations, the "pancake theory" was picked up by many religious information sources as proof of a young earth. We attempted to dialogue with many of these creationist web sites to remove the error, but were unable to convince any of them to correct their web sites. A conservative fact checking group would at least highlight information sources that replicate errors.

What convinced us to start reporting on religious misinformation on the Internet
 

A more detailed explanation of the above triggering event
 

Urban legends, pious frauds, forgeries, neat stories, relics, etc. (The jury is still out on some of these, particularly the relics)
 

Some examples of biased reporting:

	Misrepresenting an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" sitcom
	A failed attempt to enter into dialog with supporters of creation science: Part 1   Part 2
	A list of "proofs" of a Young Earth that web sites might want to avoid:  Part 1  Part 2
	Are there 3 or 30+ sexual orientations? Are prostitution, bestiality, necrophilia really sexual orientations? Part 1  Part 2
	Christian web sites that describe Wicca with varying degrees of accuracy
	A Florida Sherriff blames a multiple murder on a Wiccan ritual
	Other examples of biased reporting: Part 1 Introduction. The morning after pill. Part 2 Planned Parenthood funding. Part 3 Estimates of crowd size at the 43rd March for Life in Washington DC. Part 4: Sincere religious conservative store owner discriminating against lesbians and gays.  Religious freedom in Canada. Cause and nature of homosexual orientation Post-Abortion syndrome. Abortion/breast cancer link. Anti-hate group criticizes inaccuracies. Misc. items. Lessons to be learned. Solutions

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