Jackson Free Press

The winners of the 64th Annual (SPJ) Green Eyeshade Awards were announced this afternoon.

The Jackson Free Press placed in four categories, including garnering first-place honors for commentary (Donna Ladd) and courts & law reporting (R.L. Nave).

The JFP also won a third place award in the public-service category for our team coverage of the 2013 Jackson mayoral election and third place for feature writing.

Here are all the categories where JFP placed:

Public Service in Non-Daily Journalism

1) Birmingham News – Staff, Birmingham Civil Rights Legacy 1963-2013

2) Miami New Times – Tim Elfrink, Biogenesis series

3) Jackson Free Press – R.L. Nave, Donna Ladd, Ronni Mott, Jacob Fuller, Coverage of the 2013 Jackson, Miss., City Election

Serious Commentary- Non-Dailies

1) Jackson Free Press – Donna Ladd, Editor's Notes on Bigotry and Injustice in Mississippi

2) Independent Weekly – Lisa Sorg, "Tit for Tat," "Find your inner peace," "DENR Secretary John Skvarla: snake oil salesman?" "To act or react?"

3) Memphis Flyer – Bruce VanWyngarden, "Letter from the Editor" (five examples from 2013)

Feature Writing- Non-Dailies

1) Orlando Business Journal – Abraham Aboraya, Abe Aboraya feature

2) New Times Broward/Palm Beach – Allie Conti, Lonely Lolita

3) Jackson Free Press – R.L. Nave, Feature Stories by R.L. Nave

Courts & The Law Reporting- Non-Dailies

1) Jackson Free Press – R.L. Nave, Coverage of Politics and Criminal Justice in Jackson, Miss.

2) Independent Weekly – John H. Tucker, Can police prevent domestic violence simply by telling offenders to stop?

3) Press-Register (Alabama Media Group) Mobile, AL – Brendan Kirby, The prosecution (or persecution) of Stephen Nodine: How a suicide became murder

This falls in the can't-make-it-up column.

Most of you know that Mitchell Moore of Campbell's Bakery, who is straight, and Eddie Outlaw of William Wallace Salon, who is gay, and others started the amazing "If You're Buying, We're Selling" campaign. They want Mississippi business owners to put stickers in their windows to indicate that they don't discriminate, in response to SB 2681, Mississippi's version of the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act." (See lots of business owners with the icon in their ads in this week's JFP, too.)

So, the religious right is apparently not happy with the international media coverage the campaign is getting -- and from Mississippi, which is supposed to be their wheelhouse, you know. They really didn't like it when Emily Pettus of the AP (the JFP's next-door neighbors) did a story about this that was picked up by many outlets.

In response, they went on a PR tear to take back the messaging. Greg Scott, who tweets at @adfmedia, led the way, tweeting this week in response to the AP story: "Sticker folks protest imaginary law .@AP bows false narrative, RFRA not "vaguely written," no threat to "=treatment" http://bit.ly/QEU2El

Curious, I did some research. Turns out, Scott is the VP for media communications for Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly Alliance Defense Fund), a nonprofit group founded in 1994 by extreme-right and vocally anti-gay leaders including James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. (Interestingly, Mississippi's Judge Charles Pickering is also on the board.)

Not to be outdone, the American Family Association, an alliance co-founder, also blasted the sticker campaign on a Christian "news" site, which is part of the American Family News Network, which is part of the ... American Family Association. "It's not really a buying campaign, but it's a bully campaign," said Buddy Smith, executive vice president of Tupelo-based American Family Association, "and it's being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture."

The Southern Poverty Law Center includes the alliance (and AFA) on its list of a dozen groups that drive the "religious right's anti-gay crusade." On its website, it brags that its "attorneys have successfully defended marriage as the union between one man and one woman in over 40 cases nationwide."

SPLC indicates that the alliance was established in the early 1990s in response to gay-rights battles in the courts—which it clearly believes is the "principal" threat to religious freedom. ADF President Alan Sears and Vice President Craig Osten wrote " The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom," which ties homosexuality to pedophilia and other "disordered sexual behavior."

SPLC states: "The ADF has also mounted legal challenges to gay military service, marriage, adoption and foster-parenting, as well as to domestic partner benefits around the nation. It trains other attorneys 'to battle the radical homosexual …