Mainstream media framed religious devotion as contrary to normative male sexuality.

Evidence

This part of the article delineates normative and non-normative teenage sexuality: the normal teenage boy is interested in girls, not in religion; the abnormal teenage boy lacks interest in girls and is interested in religion. While Lindh appeared to be a normal American, he was in fact already poised to convert to Islam given his non-normative sexuality. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 940

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to analysis of how piety is gendered and racialized in Western media — echoes discussions of Orientalist framing of Muslim men. — connects to: Mainstream media treated Carter’s lust admission as scandalous though evangelicals found it unremarkable. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 83
• SEED: Essay angle: media automatically coded religious interest as desexualized deviance in a teenage convert.