In an article about the purported lack of a response by tea party activists to a Federal judge's ruling last week that section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, Sandhya Somashekhar reports (emphasis added):

The silence is by design, activists with the loosely affiliated movement said, because it is held together by an exclusive focus on fiscal matters and its avoidance of divisive social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Privately, though, many said they back the decision because it emphasizes the legal philosophy of states' rights.

Welcome to the world of uncritical reporting!

Yep, those tea partiers must be telling the truth because Somashekha makes no attempt to verify its claims. Either that or the Post reporter chose to ignore a great deal of evidence that disproves the tea party claims.

Since Somashekhar appears to have made no attempt to verify the claim that the tea party is “held together by an exclusive focus on fiscal matters” let's take a look at this piece from Chris Edelson from The Seminal who actually did the follow-up work:

You know, I used to think the Tea Party had nasty strains of bigotry and extremism running through its ranks. Maybe it was because of the racial slurs mixed with violent threats, or the “hilarious” email forwards depicting President Obama and his wife as a pimp and prostitute. Or, perhaps it was because of the Tea Party activists who shouted racist and anti-gay slurs at members of Congress. Or the t-shirts sold at a Tea Party rally that proudly declared "Yup, I'm a racist." Today, the Washington Post set me straight. The Tea Party isn't about racism, anti-gay rhetoric, or militaristic extremism.

[...]

Generalizations are dangerous and I wouldn't say all Tea Partiers are racist, anti-gay, wanna be revolutionaries. But it's clear that their rallies draw racist, anti-gay, wanna be revolutionaries and some Tea Party groups proudly claim common cause with extremist groups like the Oath Keepers. But that's too complicated, or perhaps too controversial, a story to tell. It's much easier, for the Post at least, to simply take the Tea Party at its word: they are simply libertarians worried about fiscal matters who coincidentally draw extremists to their leadership, rallies, campaigns, and websites.