User:Chaicow/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Catholic Church and gay marriage

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen this article because the relationship between LGBT+ people and religion was one of the main topics discussed in class this week. I have chosen this article from a list of LGBT+ related C-class Wikipedia pages. I picked this article because I was born and raised Catholic. I occasionally keep tabs on what the Church says and I wanted to know if the information on this page matched the more recent statements concerning LGBT+ issues released by the Church. I also chose to evaluate this article because it was also a lot shorter than I expected it to be so there is definitely a lot that can be added.

Lead section
The lead section is one sentence long and it does not thoroughly describe the topic. The introductory sentence states that the Church has taken steps to resist the legalization of same-sex marriages and civil unions. Nothing else about the topic is stated. There is no mention of where the Church is doing this or how they are going about it; I think that this would be important to add in the lead section because this is discussed a lot in the body sections of the article. In addition, there are no descriptions of the articles major sections. The lead section should be more detailed; right now, it is not very comprehensive and does not give readers an adequate overview of the topic.

Content
The article's content is relevant to the topic and there wasn't any extraneous information in the article. The content in the article is slightly dated. The most recent information in this article was Pope Francis's statement supporting civil unions for same sex couples in late 2020. However, this statement is contradicted by the Pope's statement in March of 2021 regarding same sex relationships; in this statement, the Pope expressed that homosexuality was a sin and a choice. This information was not in the article and it should have been there. In addition, information about theology, scripture, and Catholic social teaching should be included in this article. A lot of the attitudes that the Church has towards same-sex marriages is based or related to those things but there was no mention of that in the article. Though this article is in need of more content, it is good in the fact that it addresses the relationship between same-sex marriages and the Church which is an underrepresented and often misunderstood topic.

Tone and Balance
Overall, the article has a neutral point of view. This article paints the Church as intolerant of LGBT+ people and same sex marriages. However, this view is mostly accurate given the Church's traditionally strict stance on homosexuality. The article does a good job of showcasing both welcoming and intolerant viewpoints. Particularly in the last section, the article presents supportive statements that Church leaders have made towards LGBT people. Though Church leaders who hold welcoming viewpoints are scarcer than those who hold intolerant ones, it was good that the article highlighted both kinds of viewpoints. It showcases the shifting attitudes that Catholics and the Catholic church have towards LGBT people well. There were also no persuasive elements in this article. There are many more viewpoints that could have been discussed. However, when only evaluating the current content, overall, it is balanced in terms of perspective.

Sources and References
The article does an okay job in terms of its sources and referencing. The facts in the article are generally all backed up by secondary source materials. However, a significant portion of the references are from random news sites. In addition, a lot of the random news sites are ones that specifically report Catholic related news; these sources are likely biased. Also, many of the references are dated as many of them were published 5 or more years ago. Because of the recency issues, even the references from reputable sources are not very high quality. Though the references used in this article were not perfect, there are a wide variety of authors referenced. The references used ranged from traditional Catholic news sites to those that strongly support LGBT rights and issues so there were a wide range of perspectives highlighted in the article. In addition, the links still work which is good. However, there is a big lack of peer reviewed sources in this article; not a single article in the reference section was peer reviewed. There are peer reviewed articles on this topic so adding input from those sources would greatly enhance this article.

Organization and writing quality
The writing should be clear and professional, the content should be organized sensibly into sections.

The article is well written and free of grammatical errors. This article is not hard to read and is organized in a way that makes sense. However, the geographic region sections, aside from North America, should be further divided by country. The only geographic region that was divided by country was North America. The other geographic regions should be divided by country as well in order to not give the impression that this article is geared towards North American viewpoints only. Overall, aside from the issue stated above, the article is written well and organized decently.

Images and Media
This article has only two images. The first is an image of the first same-sex couple that was married in Spain and the second was an image of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini from Milan. The first image has the potential to enhance the understanding of the topic but there is no mention of the couple in the body paragraphs at all. There would have to be a mention of them in order for the image to enhance the understanding of the topic. The second image enhances the understanding of the topic because it puts a face to one of the important figures mentioned in the article. However, it is not clear why Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini was the only one selected to have an image as there were many other important figures highlighted in the article. The captions for the images are not done very well. They are very long and belong in the body paragraphs. The images would be more visually appealing if the captions were more concise. Also neither of the images are cited property. The links for both images do not lead to images that do not match the ones on the Wikipedia page.

Talk page discussion
This article is a part of WikiProject Catholicism, LGBT studies, and Politics. On all three of the projects, this article is C-rated. The talk page was short and the only discussion was about Bishops in Washington state advocating against the legalization of same sex marriage. The conversation centered around a misunderstanding about Referendum 74 which was on Washington's ballot in 2012. The user who cleared up the misunderstanding stated that the referendum was related to the legalization of same sex marriage and not establishing marriage as one man and one woman. The topic in the talk page was related to the content we learned in class. In class, we learned about statutes and laws both for the legalization of same sex marriage and against. However the content learned in class was more comprehensive as we covered statutes aside from Referendum 74. In class we covered statutes, cases, and policies such as the Defense of Marriage act, Obergefell v. Hodges, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, CA Prop. 8, etc.

Overall impressions
Overall the article is subpar. There is too much information missing in the article. The article focuses too heavily on what a select handful of Church leaders stated about same-sex marriage. There should be more information specifically about politics and policies, Catholic social teachings, theology, and scripture. In addition, the lead section, in particular, needs to be more comprehensive; one sentence is not sufficient. Also, the organization of the article should be adjusted in order to better describe the viewpoints of Church leaders not residing in the US or Canada. Given the global presence of the Catholic Church, this would be ideal. One issue that should be fixed immediately is the citations for the images. They are not correct and do not lead to the right source. Though this article needs work, it is not terrible. The article does a good job of representing multiple viewpoints on opposite sides. In addition, the authors of the references hail from a wide variety of backgrounds which is good. The article is also free of grammatical errors and discourse that is persuasive or incendiary. Overall, the article is underdeveloped. It is not poorly written or badly organized; it is simply lacking a lot of important information.