Christian Privilege Is Spreading Like a Virus

With the Covid-19 pandemic and the exemption of churches from bans on large gatherings in some states, we have seen something underscored that has been part of the Trump/GOP agenda all along and which played a key role in Trump's election: granting right wing Christians special rights and attacking Obama administration policies which protected the Christofascists' favorite targets: Gays, women seeking abortions, and non-Christians.  Combined with this, Trump has pandered to the charlatans who comprise leading figures in the so-called It's the reason evangelicals continue to support Trump, the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins.  What is equally disturbing is the effort to grant large amounts of taxpayer funds given to "Christian" organizations who them discriminate against the recipients of their allegedly charitable operations be they adoption/foster care services to or healthcare services.  All of these things make a mockery of the First Amendment's ban on an established religion.  Like it or not, America now has a de facto established religion: fundamentalist Christianity.  A piece in The Advocate looks at this dangerous trend.  Here are excerpts:

At the end of March, President Trump attempted to reassure Americans who are feeling the stress of the coronavirus pandemic by inviting Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, to speak at his daily press briefing.

Calling America a “nation [that] had turned his back on God,” Mr. Lindell encouraged people to “use this time at home to get back in the Word, read our Bibles, and spend time with our families.”

Meanwhile, in New York City, a Christian organization called Samaritan's Purse, led by notoriously anti-LGBTQ Christian supremacist Franklin Graham, has set up a field hospital in Central Park to treat overflow patients in cooperation with Mt. Sinai Hospital from nearby hospitals. Even during this pandemic, this organization requires volunteers and health care workers to sign a statement of faith, proclaiming that marriage is defined as "exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female" and that unbelievers are sentenced to "everlasting punishment in hell.” The group is well known for using its social services to proselytize. Last year, the organization received $39 million in government support. 

“Christian privilege” is the term atheists and nonreligious people frequently use to describe how Christian viewpoints, particularly conservative evangelical ones like those expressed by Lindell and Graham, are favored over nonreligious viewpoints in our law and culture. If you ask most Americans, they believe that the separation of church and state enshrined in the U.S. Constitution should apply to everyone and prevent the government from giving taxpayer dollars or special favoritism to churches. Sadly, this is less and less true.

Using their nearly unlimited wealth, access to powerful politicians like Donald Trump and Mike Pence, and increasing control over the court system, a tiny minority of Christian supremacists have done everything they can to establish special rights for religious organizations. These extremist groups are indeed achieving their goal: guaranteed government funding, free of oversight and exempt from nondiscrimination rules, to allow them to advance their religious mission as they see fit.

And there is evidence that this failure to live up to our constitutional precepts is having a significantly negative impact on those groups most reviled by Christian supremacists: LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and yes, atheists and nonreligious people.

Here is a bit of a preview: when it comes to health care, the tens of thousands of nonreligious people surveyed painted a bleak picture. One in ten (10.7 percent) faced discrimination in health care because of their nonreligious beliefs within the past three years, and in areas of specialized health such as mental health (17.7 percent) and substance abuse services (15.2 percent), the numbers were even higher.

I don’t trust Graham’s organization to offer unbiased services, and I don’t know why any nonreligious or LGBTQ person would. Perhaps more importantly, like many people, I would never choose to receive services from such a discriminatory organization, and it violates my right to religious freedom for the government to force me to do so by providing essential social services through these organizations.

If our constitutional protections are to mean anything, they must apply equally to everyone, even during emergencies. It is incumbent on all of us to not allow Christian privilege to overcome the rule of law.

Trump is a Threat to Religious Liberty

Donald Trump is many things, but a defender of the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment protecting freedom of religion, he is not.  Indeed, he is a threat to constitutional government and the religious freedom of except strident, far right Christian extremists who seek to totally subvert the concept as laid down by the Founding Fathers. Indeed, they want a de facto established religion that only upholds their own toxic and perverted version of Christianity.  Playing on the self-centered hypocrisy of the Christofascists and "Christian leaders" like Jerry Falwell, Jr., Pat Robertson and a host of similar scam artists, Trump has set about depriving others of their religious freedom and, hopefully in time, a major backlash against right wing Christians where their nonsensical claims of persecution might become a reality as they find themselves being treated as they have treated others for so much of history. A piece in New York Magazine looks at Trump and the Christofascists destruction of true religious freedom.  Here are highlights:

A central pillar of Donald Trump’s compact with conservative Christians, which has been immensely useful for him and is critical to his reelection prospects, is his much-professed concern for “religious liberty.” There’s a whole fact sheet about the topic on the White House website. It was the alleged subject of a major executive order early in his presidency.

But as Steven Waldman (founder of Beliefnet, a web portal for all things religious) observes in Sacred Liberty, his recently published comprehensive history of America’s tradition of religious freedom, Trump’s actual record is not so positive:

Donald Trump’s legacy on this issue can seem confusing. He talks about defending religious freedom more than almost any other president. His administration has taken a few positive steps, such as deciding that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could give disaster relief to houses of worship and raising concerns about persecution of Christians overseas. . . . But much of his religious liberty agenda involves efforts, focused largely on helping conservative Christians, that are minor, symbolic, or actually damaging.

Most obvious, Trump is the first president since the virulently anti-Mormon Rutherford B. Hayes to publicly single out a religious community for opprobrium and (attempted) discrimination. . . . . he has violated most of the principles that have sustained religious freedom by favoring one religion over another; ignoring First Amendment protections; blurring the distinctions between Americans practicing their faith and extremists overseas; and proposing that practitioners of one faith should have second-class citizenship. He has made the concept of religious freedom partisan instead of universal, a way to divide rather than unite.

Trump is a friend to religion only if your religion happens to be the same as that of his conservative Evangelical and traditionalist Catholic allies, who have a mutually exploitative and very transactional relationship with the 45th president.

[M]uch of Trump’s talk about religious liberty involves reinforcing the fatuous paranoia of some conservative Christians who believe state neutrality toward their faith, as well as the spread of nonbelief or religious heterodoxy, actually represents persecution.

The many thousands of Christian martyrs over the centuries (and those still suffering in other countries) must be laughing or crying at the idea that being disrespected by retailers and seasonal-card senders is some sort of crucifixion. But it reflects Trump’s close identification with the Christian right’s claim that the liberty to practice one’s faith “in the public square” is so absolute that it excludes counter-concerns ranging from simple courtesy (the main problem with shouting “Merry Christmas” at non-Christians) to anti-discrimination laws. Again, Waldman explains how efforts to accommodate religious practice have degenerated into demands for plenary exemptions from norms the rest of society observes, to the point at which conservative Christians began to distort and politicize their own faith traditions . . . .

Millions of Americans (most notably Catholics, but many Evangelicals, too) go to church regularly without for a moment sharing the hostility to homosexuality (or, for that matter, legalized abortion) that their leaders increasingly treat as fundamental to their beliefs. Such distortion of an ancient faith is a lot more dangerous than any threats to the tender conscience of the occasional aggrieved baker.

Not that long ago, conservative Evangelicals typically regarded church-state separation as the central principle of religious liberty. Most Christian-right leaders have abandoned or even inverted that position. When Thomas Jefferson referred to religious liberty as requiring a “wall of separation” between church and state (a precedent today’s Christian-right leaders either ignore or attack in making the case that the Founders wanted a Christian nation), he was siding with Connecticut Baptists fighting a government that was hostile to minority religious communities. Similarly, James Madison’s commitment to total state neutrality on matters of religion was informed by his relationships with Virginia Evangelicals. . . . All that has changed radically.

In this transformation of conservative Christianity’s political arm from the self-confident advocacy of pluralism in matters of faith to a narrow, sex-obsessed movement fighting to bring back the imagined paradise of the 1950s, Trump was perhaps an inevitable figure. If ever there were a complete product of the most de-Christianized traits of secular culture, it’s Donald Trump. Yet he offers his religious supporters unconditional backing in their wars against abortion, LGBTQ rights, secular public education, and, yes, believers in what they consider false gods.

In 20th-century Europe, authoritarian movements exploited conservative Christians eager to fight socialism and secularism and regain their old power over cultural life. These politicized believers were ultimately corrupted and betrayed. Trump may serve the short-term purposes of those who have convinced themselves he is a modern-day Cyrus the Great, a “nonbeliever appointed by God as a vessel for the purposes of the faithful.” But he is no friend of liberty and, in the longer view, represents a threat to America’s great tradition of religious pluralism.

Saudi Arabia Remains a Brutal, Repressive Enemy of the West

Donald Trump and his sycophants bloviate about Iran being a threat to the West and western values, yet Saudi Arabia remains the largest financier of Islamic extremism and continues to export its toxic version of Islam across the globe. Yet one hears barely a peep out of the Trump White House because of Saudis Arabia's oil reserves and pretense that is an ally of America.  Now, in a spat with Canada, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is demonstrating that despite some window dressing, little has really changed under his supposed drive to modernize the backward and religiously extreme nation.  It seems the prince's delicate ego could not tolerate Canada's condemnation of the treatment of two human rights activists.  Saudi Arabia is a signatory to the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but like so many despotic nations rarely follows through when it comes to actually respecting human rights, especially if it means crossing the ignorance embracing Islamic establishment. One has to wonder when Americans - other than Christofascists who would like to emulate Saudi Arabia's theocracy with a Christian version - will realize that Saudi Arabia is no ally.  Here are highlights from a New York Times column that looks at the Canada/Saudi Arabia dispute:

Saudi Arabia and its crockery-breaking heir apparent, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, are, once again, opening up claims of advancing a more progressive future for the kingdom to doubt.

Faced with criticism from Canada over the treatment of two prominent human rights activists, Saudi rulers on Monday did the kind of thing that backward, insecure despots often do — they lashed out and penalized their critics.

Riyadh expelled the Canadian ambassador and announced a freeze on all new business with Canada, which counts Saudi Arabia as its second-largest export market in the Middle East. The Saudis also said the kingdom would withdraw from Canada the approximately 12,000 Saudi students on government-funded scholarships and family members and transfer them to other countries.

[T]his Saudi retribution is unnecessarily aggressive and clearly intended to intimidate critics into silence. It’s the kind of move that, in the past, would have immediately elicited a firm, unified opposition from the West. So far, there’s hardly been even a whimper of protest.

Canada ran afoul of the Saudis when its foreign ministry called for the release of the women’s rights activist Samar Badawi, who was arrested last week, and her brother, Raif Badawi, who is in prison for running a website that criticized Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment.

In 2013, Mr. Badawi was sentenced to 1,000 lashes with a cane, 10 years in prison and a large fine for administering the site. He received the first 50 lashes in 2015, but his punishment was suspended, at least temporarily, after a video of the lashings drew international outrage.

Saudi Arabia has offered no explanation for why Ms. Badawi, whose activist-lawyer former husband is also in jail, was detained. But she has long campaigned against the kingdom’s guardianship laws, which prevent women from traveling abroad or obtaining certain medical procedures without the consent of a male relative.

The Saudis claim that the Canadian statement is “an overt and blatant interference” in its internal affairs, but that argument is specious. Mr. Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, and their three children have political asylum in Canada, and she became a Canadian citizen last month.

Saudi Arabia is a signatory of the [United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights] Charter and a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, whose mission is to strengthen the “promotion and protection of human rights around the globe.” Since ascending to power with his father, King Salman, in 2015, Prince Mohammed has encouraged foreign investment, granted women the right to drive, opened commercial movie theaters for the first time in 30 years and worked to soften the kingdom’s ultraconservative official school of Islam.

But he also has evinced an authoritarian edge, locking up clerics, activists and businessmen. Under Prince Mohammed, the Saudis have also not been shy about speaking out about, or directly intervening in, the affairs of other countries, including Yemen, Bahrain and Qatar.

On Monday, the White House refused to comment. The only reaction so far has been from a State Department official who spoke on background and equated Canada and Saudi Arabia as “both close allies,” even though only Canada is a member of NATO.

Mr. Trump has previously signaled acquiescence to, if not fondness for, the kingdom’s authoritarian ways. And the American president's own attempts to bully Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, in June may make Prince Mohammed feel bolder about lashing out.

The administration’s passive response also represents a chilling abandonment of two activists whose unjust treatment has been acknowledged by the United States itself: Ms. Badawi received the State Department’s Women of Courage Award in 2012 in a ceremony with Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a government agency, has a page on its website highlighting Mr. Badawi’s case.

Not even two weeks ago, the State Department held a much-hyped religious freedom conference, headlined by Vice President Mike Pence, that issued a lofty statement advocating the “recognition of universal human rights and human dignity.” It’s hard to take that statement too seriously so long as the White House remains quiet about these recent developments.

I suspect that Trump yearns to rule in a manner akin to the Saudi Price who can censor the news media and arrest and imprison his political rivals. 

A Night of Terror, a Year of Racism

Today is the anniversary of the Pulse night club massacre in Orlando, Florida, where 49 young gays and some of their family members were murdered seemingly simply because the were LGBT.  In the year since, things have not gotten better for either gays or those suspected of being Muslim (e.g., the two Hindus murdered in Oklahoma by a man who thought they were Muslim).  In terms of LGBT rights, Congressional Republicans continue to consider a falsely named "religious freedom" bill that would legalize anti-LGBT discrimination, Texas's governor has called a special legislative session in order to ram through an anti-transgender bathroom bill, and Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, has rescinded Obama administration executive orders granting LGBT employees non-discrimination protections and through long time anti-gay zealot, Betsy DeVos, is seemingly opening the door to increased anti-gay bullying in our public schools.  As icing on the cake, over the weekend white supremacists, Neo-Nazis and hate groups rallied against Muslims and by extension anyone who wasn't white and Christian.  It would seem that as a country, many learned nothing from the Pulse tragedy, including Der Trumpenführer who, despite his boast immediately after the Pulse massacre has proven to be a dangerous foe to the LGBT community.   An op-ed in the New York Times by a a recent college graduate who had been a Pulse regular looks at some of the ugliness.  Here are excerpts:

A year ago today, a mass shooting during a Latin-theme dance night at Pulse, a popular gay bar in Orlando, Fla., left 49 people dead, more than 50 injured and the city — particularly its L.G.B.T. and Latino communities — shaken.

I woke up to about 60 notifications on my phone that morning. Most were from friends and family asking if I was O.K. My mother was crying, worried I had been at the club.

A drag queen from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” who I love, performed there that night, so it was entirely possible. Three years before, as a freshman at the University of Central Florida, I often went to Pulse with my new college friends, all of us L.G.B.T. in one way or another and looking for a sense of community that seemed out of reach in straight daylight.

I remember being amazed by the swift and empathetic response from the city and much of the country. The shooting started at 2 a.m., and by the time most of the city was waking up, so many volunteers had headed downtown to help that blood donation centers were turning people away. Politicians of all stripes, including those who hadn’t seemed particular pro-L.G.B.T. or supportive of Latino communities, spoke of solidarity. Rainbows were painted all over Orlando; many still remain on the walls of the Walt Disney Amphitheater at Lake Eola or on the sides of police cars.

As a gay person of color, I found something truly comforting about this response. Part of me felt accepted, understood and even coddled in the midst of this harrowing event.

Another part felt more targeted than ever. . . . . My mom is from the Dominican Republic, where I spent most of my childhood. I speak fluent Spanish and have been known to cook a mean rice and beans with tostones. But my dad is from Pakistan, and from him I inherited a thin nose, dark eyes and a full beard of coarse hair. I am used to being treated as a suspicious person.

When I fly, for example, my Spotify playlist is usually interrupted by a T.S.A. agent letting me know I’ve “been selected for additional screening.”

This stereotyping has gotten much worse since the Pulse shooting, because despite the outpouring of support for L.G.B.T. and Latino people, the tragedy became an excuse to vilify Muslims before the 2016 presidential election.

The day of the shooting, before most of the victims were identified, Donald J. Trump, then a candidate, tweeted: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.” From that moment on, it was clear that the tragedy would not become a reason to champion noble or productive causes like gun reform. Instead, it would become Exhibit A in Mr. Trump’s justification for a ban on Muslims entering the country — despite the fact that the shooter was an American and Muslim refugees have not killed anyone in the United States.

The Pulse nightclub shooting was a terrible act of violence against a marginalized group of people. Attacking another marginalized group is not the way to prevent more shootings, or to help survivors heal. 

4th Circuit Rules 10-3 Against Trump Muslim Ban

Donald Trump ranted against the 9th Circuit when his first attempt at a ban against Muslims went down in flames. Now, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has struck down Der Trumpenführer's second attempt at banning Muslims from entering America.    In its ruling, the Court recognized the motivation behind the executive order: religious based  intolerance and animus. The ruling will not sit well with Christofascists but ought to be encouraging for those who continue to believe in true religious freedom - not the perverted Christofascist version - and the First Amendment.  Salon looks at the ruling which will likely push the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Here are highlights:

Yet another federal court ruled against President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from six majority-Muslim nations. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the so-called Muslim travel ban executive order “drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” The court refused to lift a nationwide injunction blocking the ban.  

In a 10-3 ruling, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, noted that President Trump’s power to deny entry to immigrants, while “broad,” isn’t “absolute.”

[A]n Executive Order that in text speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination. Surely the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment yet stands as an untiring sentinel for the protection of one of our most cherished founding principles—that government shall not establish any religious orthodoxy, or favor or disfavor one religion over another. Congress granted the President broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute. It cannot go unchecked

Trump’s revised ban “cannot be divorced from the cohesive narrative linking it to the animus that inspired it,” Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote.

Trump’s revised ban was announced in March after the first version of the ban was shot down by federal courts. But the ban on people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S. for 90 days and all refugees for 120 days never got off the ground because federal courts blocked it just hours before it was set to go into effect.

How the DNC Did Religious Liberty Right

One thing that became clear from the two national party conventions is that Democrats understand the concept of religious freedom envisioned by the Founders while in contrast the Republican view is more like one would have found under the Puritans in early Massachusetts or the Spanish Inquisition. Under the Republican view, only one religion is acceptable - i.e., conservative/fundamentalist Christianity - and it and its adherents should enjoy special rights.  Both parties' views were on open display at their respective conventions.  A piece in Slate looks at how the DNC got the concept right. Here are highlights:

Khizr Khan, a Muslim immigrant whose son was killed while serving in Iraq, brought the Democratic National Convention to tears and raucous applause on Thursday when he held up his pocket Constitution and admonished Donald Trump: “Have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy.” Khan’s rebuke was, of course, a profoundly moving and very necessary rejoinder to Trump’s rampant Islamophobia. But that powerful moment, as well as Khan’s entire address, also revealed that after years of surrendering the issue to the GOP, Democrats have finally learned how to talk about and present a progressive vision of religious liberty.

Indeed, that very phrase—religious liberty—has become so freighted with discriminatory overtones that I hesitate to use it. The fight for “religious liberty” has come to dominate the Republican Party in recent years, through a series of campaigns that aim to promote prejudiced Christians’ freedom over everybody else’s. . . . We’ve even seen laws that, under the banner of religious freedom, give mental health counselors and medical doctors the right to refuse to treat gay and trans patients.

In a clever act of doublespeak, Republicans have branded these measures “religious liberty”—but, as a federal judge recently pointed out, they really amount of Christian supremacy. (Or, more accurately, conservative Christian supremacy.) This attempt to legally elevate certain Christian beliefs above all others flatly contradicts the spirit and letter of the First Amendment.

Khan’s address didn’t just throw this hypocrisy into stark relief; it demonstrated exactly how Democrats can seize true religious liberty as a winning issue for progressives. Consider Khan’s precise phrasing. “In this document,” he said, holding up his pocket Constitution, “look for the words liberty and equal protection of law.” Liberty and equality: Two constitutional guarantees that are intertwined and interdependent, each building on the other, each a critical component of freedom in a democracy. “Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery?” Khan continued. “Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities.”

An entire cemetery of soldiers—Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists—who devoted their lives to protecting a country that dispenses justice evenhandedly, with preference for none and tolerance for all. Khan might as well have been paraphrasing U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who blocked Mississippi’s anti-LGBTQ “religious liberty” law on both Establishment Clause and Equal Protection grounds, holding that it violated both “the guarantee of religious neutrality and the promise of equal protection of the laws.” In America, Reeves explained, religious freedom does not, cannot mean limiting the freedom of those who don’t share your beliefs.

Muslims’ best hope for liberty lies in this preservation of equality—the continued insistence that the government can neither discriminate against certain religions (as Trump would) nor license certain religions to discriminate against others (as Mississippi would). That is the Constitution’s vision of liberty as well, and it is precisely how Democrats should explain their own conception of religious freedom.

Religious Extremist Rally for Davis

click image to enlarge

UPDATED: As blogger friend Joe Jervis reports, the group rallying in support of Kim Davis not surprisingly included a rabid white supremacist.  Highlights from Joe's post:

Yesterday notorious white supremacist Michael Peroutka spoke at the rally outside the jail holding Kim Davis. Peroutka is a former leader of the League Of The South, which recently “celebrated” the 150th anniversary of the assassination of “tyrant” Abraham Lincoln. 
 
The SPLC calls Peroutka “an avid Southern secessionist and radical Christian Reconstructionist.” According to Wikipedia, Christian Reconstructionists call for overthrowing the US government and replacing it with a “biblical theocracy.” The new Christian theocracy would then reinstate Mosaic penal laws under which “the list of crimes which carried a death sentence would include homosexuality, adultery [KIM DAVIS!], incest, lying about one’s virginity, bestiality, witchcraft, idolatry or apostasy, public blasphemy, false prophesying, kidnapping, rape, and bearing false witness in a capital case.”

As I have said, this folk are pushing treason.

ORIGINAL POST: The image above pretty sums up the mindset of the extreme Christofascists who rallied in support for jailed law breaker Kim Davis.  To say that they hold the religious freedom of others in contempt is an understatement.  Even more frightening is that at least half of the Republican presidential nominee candidates are actively prostituting themselves to these people.  The Lexington Courier-Journal has more on the gathering of those who ultimately seek to subvert the U.S. Constitution - which once upon a time was called treason .  Here are highlights:

Hundreds of people gathered outside the Carter County Detention Center on Saturday and prayed for jailed Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who was locked up just a few hundred feet away.

"She won't bow, I promise you," her husband, Joe Davis, told the crowd while dressed in overalls and a camouflage ball cap. He said he talked to her the morning she was put in jail and the two of them decided not to give in.  "I'm just an old, dumb, country hillbilly, but I know God," he said.

People came from as far as Wisconsin and North Carolina to attend.  "This is as grass roots as it gets," he said.

Some speakers took a more prayerful tone while others got political — one ordained minister and insurance agent from Morehead told the crowd that it needs to send Gov. Steve Beshear, who he blames for Davis' jailing, by voting against his son, Andy, who is running for attorney general.

"Make sure we hold Beshear responsible for his inaction," Randy Smith exhorted the crowd.

Smith also attacked Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway, who is running for governor, accusing him of violating the law when he did not appeal the original judicial ruling striking down the state's gay marriage ban — and Beshear for letting him.

The crowd and the speakers didn't have kind words for Bunning, either.   One man held a sign that said "Judge Bunning is an abomination."

Flip Benham, an evangelist from North Carolina, praised Bunning's father, former U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, as a staunch conservative but ended his kind words there.  "His son is working against the will of God," said Benham, who carried a white cap with the name "Jesus" on it. "He's being used by the devil to park Kim here."

These people are clearly crazy.  The only question is that of when some will resort to violence as they fight against modernity itself and anything that threatens the fantasy world in which they live.  

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Clerks Opposed to Gay Marriage Should Resign

Photo: Timothy D. Easley/AP

The Richmond Times-Dispatch is among Virginia's most conservative newspapers.  Such being the case, it often hawks reactionary Republican talking points, especially in its editorials.  Thus, it was a surprise to see the Times-Dispatch  commuting political heresy in an editorial that said court clerks who oppose same sex marriage and refuse to do their jobs need to resign.  The piece argues that once one takes a position as a public official, personal rights on religious belief and other issues often go out the window.  The same, of course, should be true of organizations accepting taxpayer funds: once you take public dollars, your right to discriminate against members of the public must cease (it's a concept lost on Catholic agencies here in Virginia).  Here are editorial highlights:

Kim Davis, the county clerk in Rowan County, Ky., is carrying out her own form of massive resistance. Despite a federal court order, she refuses to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. A few other clerks across the country are doing the same.

The clerks claim to be exercising their First Amendment right to religious liberty, just as a few bakers, photographers and others have exercised theirs by declining to provide services for gay weddings. But the two situations are not the same.

Individuals can exercise many rights as private citizens that they cannot exercise as government officials. Teachers, for instance, are free to stand on the street corner on the weekend and urge everyone within hearing distance to accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. They can’t do the same thing in the public-school classroom.

Religious scruples are a legitimate reason for a church not to perform marriage rites for gay couples. They are not a legitimate grounds for government to deny marriage licenses; the Supreme Court has ruled that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry. Davis cannot turn her own interpretation of Christianity into public policy for Rowan County. If she sincerely believes that abetting gay marriage is an affront to her conscience, then she has only one option left: Quit.

Note the interesting correlation made to Davis' conduct and "massive resistance," one of the most shameful parts of Virginia's history when public schools in some counties were closed rather than  allow black students attend.   There is a direct correlation between racists and segregationist and folks like Davis who are raising the false cry of "religious liberty" whether or not the godly folk are willing to take a good look at themselves int he mirror.

Thinly Veiled Hate Speech: "Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin"

Besides being a total hypocrite when it comes to supporting Israel, Huckabee and his fellow Christofascists love to claim that they don't hate gays.  Indeed, they claim to "love gays" - they disingenuously claim that they "love the sinner, but hate the sinner."  They make these claims, of course even as they strive to make the lives of LGBT individuals a living hell and demand the right to mistreat us and discriminate against under the guise of religious freedom.  The take away?  That these people are vile hypocrites and few people lie more often than the self-anointed "godly folk."  A piece in Huffington Post calls out these modern day Pharisees.  Here are highlights:

“I love her, but she’s got to learn right from wrong,” he said … after beating her half to death. And there she lies, one foot in this world and another in the next--but fully “loved.”

I imagine that’s what LGBTQ folks hear when yet another Christian says, “I love the sinner, but I hate the sin.”

Now, I can imagine that immediately upon reading the connection between those last two thoughts, cries of righteous indignation will rise as a chorus unto heaven. “We’re not abusers, simply because we hate what homosexuals do with their private parts. We’ve never actually, physically struck a gay person because of their gayness.”

Nevertheless, I don’t think that gets you off the hook for the violence that is done in the name of your religious commitments for two important reasons.

First, when you fight against anti-bullying laws written to keep LGBTQ kids safe from being abused, you are propping up a system of violence that steals the dignity, and often the lives of those children you say you love. If a gay or trans kid commits suicide because you want to retain the right to loudly and repeatedly announce to the world your moral disapprobation, giving energy to a system dedicated to never letting LGBTQ kids forget that they are sinful aberrations for which the fires of hell are regularly stoked hotter, you bear some responsibility for their death.  

When LGBTQ kids get beaten, when they’re kicked out of their homes and forced to live on the streets and struggle to do some of the despicable things they have to do to stay alive, you may not be raising a hand against them, but you’re certainly massaging the muscles that do the damage. When you support a vision of the world in which LGBTQ people daily have to live in fear for their livelihoods, their homes, their right to a peaceful and flourishing existence just so you can proudly announce your doctrinal purity and your commitment to a world where only your religious beliefs matter, you may not be drawing anyone’s actual blood--but don’t kid yourself that there’s not blood on your hands.

Second, physical violence isn’t the only kind of violence. The abuse that takes place in families, for instance, is often not physical abuse. You can lay claim to having never physically harmed a person, while at the same time being guilty of killing that person’s soul.

[Y]our attempts at “loving” the object of your disapproval always seem to come off as a self-righteous assertion of your moral superiority (at best), or downright antipathy (at worst). 

 Saying you love someone as you punch them in the mouth, or standing by (while cheering or remaining silent) while somebody else punches them in the mouth or loudly fighting for laws that will continue making punching them in the mouth legal in the name of “religious freedom” isn’t love. 

A cursory reading of the Gospels suggests that, for those of us who follow Jesus, love isn’t the perpetual need to make everyone else conform to our understanding of righteousness; it’s the merciful realization that Jesus has freed us from the responsibility of thinking that’s even our job. 

I will be honest.  I do not like or respect Christofascists.  They are horrible, self-centered people, many of whom can't stand the thought of having to think for themselves.   They would rather harm others and childishly follow the dictates of often parasitical clerics rather than use their minds and think for themselves.  They deserve no place in decent society.

Is Jeb Bush Trying to Have it Both Ways on Gay Rights?

Perhaps having anticipated the severe blow back that Scott Walker brought down on himself with his remarks that the soon to be defunct Boy Scouts of America ban on gay leaders "protected children" from gay predators, Jeb "Jebbie" Bush seems to be trying to play it both ways on gay rights and has seemingly said that he supports the passage of state employment non-discrimination laws to protect LGBT individuals.  No doubt leaders of hate groups like Tony Perkins of FRC and Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation and rabid anti-gay Republicans in Virginia must be blowing gaskets over Bush's remarks.  Despite how much I detest Jebbie, he apparently seems to understand that totally prostituting himself to the Christofascists to win in primaries in states such as Iowa could mean he's DOA in the general election.  Time looks at Jebbies fast dancing and possible double speak on this issue.  Here are highlights:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush indicated Thursday that he thinks existing laws sufficient to ensure men and women are paid equally for the same work, but that he would back legislation in the states to prevent workplace and housing discrimination against LGBT Americans.

An employee who identified himself to Bush as being gay asked about Bush’s position on legislation to ban discrimination of LGBT Americans. “I don’t think you should be discriminated because of your sexual orientation. Period. Over and out,” he replied.

Citing the frequently-used example by religious freedom advocates, Bush said that in the case of a florist approached by a gay couple, “you should be obligated to sell them flowers, doing otherwise would be discriminatory.” But he said that the objecting florist should not be required to participate in the wedding, a fine line that he hopes will appeal to all sides of the debate.

When the employee followed up to ask specifically whether he would support anti-discrimination laws for LGBT Americans for their housing and employment—the next target for gay rights marriage advocates—Bush said he would at the state level.  “I think this should be done state-by-state, I totally agree with that,” he said.

It will be interesting to watch the "godly folk" go berserk over any suggestion that they should not have the special right to discriminate against and abuse LGBT individuals.  Jebbie best fasten his seat belt.

The Limits of "Religious Liberty"

As a number of posts on this blog have explored, there are real limits to the "religious liberty" granted under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  And those limits are increasingly being ignored by the Christofascists who are showing themselves more and more to be self-centered people who care nothing about the rights of others.  It is ALL about them and it is ALL about trying to force their hate and fear based religious beliefs on all of society, in part because they are terrified at the prospect of having to think for themselves and reevaluate childish beliefs that they were indoctrinated with.  A column in the New York Times looks at the ongoing phenomenon of false claims of threats to religious liberty.  It also looks at the parallels with Jim Crow era claims and also the possible long term damage done to religious freedom as contemplated by the Constitution as push back to the Christofascists grows.  Here are excerpts:

Following the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, religious objections to serving gay couples are mounting in more states. Invoking religious liberty in this way presents ‘‘special concerns’’ by prolonging social conflict, according to a recent article by two law professors, Reva B. Siegel of Yale and Douglas NeJaime of the University of California, Irvine. They point to the aftermath of Roe v. Wade: After the Supreme Court ruling legalized abortion throughout the country, Congress and state legislatures ensured that a doctor, nurse or other health care professional could refuse to participate in providing an abortion as a matter of conscience. Over the decades, these ‘‘conscience clauses’’ expanded in some states to include counseling, referral and pharmaceutical services, allowing people who fill prescriptions, for example, to exert a form of social control in the name of their own religious freedom.

All of this is making longtime proponents of religious liberty nervous. Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia, has helped write state religious freedom bills and supported the ones that foundered in Indiana and Arkansas. But in an article last year, he issued a warning to evangelical leaders. ‘‘It is a risky step to interfere with the most intimate details of other people’s lives while loudly claiming liberty for yourself,’’ Laycock wrote. ‘‘If you stand in the way of a revolution and lose, there will be consequences.’’

Refusing to serve customers has an ugly history. A half-century ago, the civil rights movement held lunch-counter sit-ins to protest Jim Crow. No one succeeded then in claiming a God-given right to refuse to serve black customers. Throughout the South, businesses open to the public became open to all. Today, in the name of religious liberty, there is robust Southern opposition to same-sex marriage. But supporters say the analogy to the exclusions of Jim Crow is inapt, because racial segregation was never central to Christian teaching the way traditional marriage has been. They also correctly point out that strong national laws protect against discrimination on the basis of race, but not against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In many states, in the South and elsewhere, a business or a landlord doesn’t need a special faith-based reason for turning away a gay client or tenant. They’re simply free to do so.

Given the speed with which public support for same-sex marriage is growing, gay people may win other rights against discrimination. But what about private religious schools and social-service organizations? ‘‘Hard questions’’ will arise, Chief Justice John Roberts predicted in his dissent from the same-sex marriage ruling, when, ‘‘for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex couples.’’

In the Senate and the House of Representatives, dozens of Republicans quickly signed on to a bill that would protect the tax-exempt status of a religious organization in such a situation and prevent any government action against a business that refused to serve a gay couple. On both sides of this fight, tolerance no longer seems to be the word of the day. ‘‘The religious resisters say, ‘It doesn’t matter if you can have the wedding you want, because you shouldn’t be getting married anyway,’ ’’ Laycock said over the phone last week.

Already Americans are leaving religion in droves.  As Christofascists increasingly become outliers - a trend I hope accelerates -  these selfish cretins may be unwittingly setting the stage for future further restrictions on their ability to mistreat and discriminate against others. 

Today's "Religious Liberty" Claims Mirror Those of Segregationists

It seems the Christofascists and their allies have little desire to cease pushing their specious "religious liberty" claims through which they seek to exempt themselves from compliance with non-discrimination laws and even having to serve those they don't like even if they are governmental officials.  This tactic is actually nothing new and in the 1968 decision of the Supreme Court in Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, the Court rejected the claims of a barbecue chain that claimed that it could refuse to serve black people (in violation of an anti-discrimination statute) because the owner’s “religious beliefs compel him to oppose any integration of the races whatever.”  The Court, in fact, allowed the plaintiffs to recover attorneys fees against the restaurant chain.  A piece in the Washionton Post looks at the Christofascist demand for special rights under the deceptive claim of "religious liberty."  Here are highlights:

Don’t like same-sex marriage, contraception, HIV testing or even child labor laws? Never you worry: Just say that a higher power has exempted you, even if your exemption means trampling on other people’s rights. 

Texas’s attorney general recently encouraged public officials to deny same-sex couples marriage licenses if doing so violated their religious convictions. Other state politicians and companies have also recently tried to cite religious belief as an excuse for refusing to serve gay men and lesbians or to treat them equally under the law, even in states where sexual orientation is a legally protected class.

“Religious liberty” has been invoked to circumvent other laws, too.

“Religious liberty” torchbearers speak as if there is a rich tradition of accommodating any citizen who says that a law burdens her faith, regardless of the societal fallout. But the actual history of religious accommodation looks different.

[R]eligious exemptions to laws have been granted only within very prescribed bounds — including the principle that you’re entitled to religious accommodations only if they don’t burden or harm others, or otherwise create havoc in the legal system.  

[I]n 1985 the court also struck down a different state law requiring employers to honor whatever holy day their workers chose. Why would the court say that workers’ holy days deserved deference in one case and not another? The government has to allow you to practice whatever religion you choose — and observe whatever holy day you wish — but it will not protect your right to excessively burden other citizens (here, employers and co-workers who must accommodate your schedule) in the name of that religious belief.

The court has used similar logic when considering whether faith can exempt people from civil rights and public accommodations law. Bob Jones University lost its tax-exempt status because it refused to admit students engaged in or advocating interracial relationships. The school had claimed that it should be exempted from anti-discrimination law because its leaders “genuinely believe[d] that the Bible forbids interracial dating and marriage.” 

In the case perhaps most directly comparable to the latest arguments made about religious liberty and gay customers, 1968’s Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, the Supreme Court affirmed the principle that a barbecue chain could not refuse to serve black people, in violation of an anti-discrimination statute, simply because the owner’s “religious beliefs compel him to oppose any integration of the races whatever.”

Constitutional and statutory protections of religious liberty give Americans the right to worship whomever they choose, however they like, on whatever day they like. But there are well-established limits to weaponizing those beliefs against your fellow man.

Fundamentalist religions and those who use religion to harm others and deprive them of their rights are a plague on the world.  They and their claims need to be rejected and tirelessly opposed.

County Clerks Refusing to Issue Marriage Licenses Need to Find New Jobs

Click to enlarge - the Founders; real view of religion

Even before the Supreme Court handed down its same sex marriage ruling in Obergefell, the Christofascists were hard at work distorting the intend behind and the protections afforded by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.  The Founding Fathers' concept of "religious freedom" was actually very narrow: (i) no citizen could be force through taxes or otherwise to support an established church or religion, (ii) every citizen could worship in the church or denomination of their choosing, and (iii) no citizen could be prohibited from seeking public office based on their religious beliefs or church affiliation.  Never, ever, did the Founders contemplate that "religious freedom" would be used to exempt elected officials and/or state employees from refusing to perform the duties of their office or job position.  Nevertheless, now we see the Christofascists claiming that  their right to religious freedom allows them to ignore laws they do not like and to refuse to perform their job duties.  It's a total distortion and lie - like most of what comes from the mouths of Christofascists.  A piece in Salon looks at their lies and hypocrisy.  Here are excerpts:

As attorney Joe Dunman, co-counsel for the Kentucky plaintiffs in the state’s marriage equality cases, noted on Twitter on Tuesday, “It must be made clear: public servants, acting in their official capacity, simply do not have religious beliefs. They are secular servants…. If you, acting as an agent of the state, may invoke your religious whims, those whims become the whims of the state. We are not a theocracy. If your religious beliefs make it impossible for you to enforce and uphold the constitutional rights you swore to defend, you must resign.” (Kentucky is dealing with its own rogue county clerks, too.)

And in a statement, Denton County Clerk Juli Luke said this week, “Personally, same-sex marriage is in contradiction to my faith and belief that marriage is between one man and one woman. However, first and foremost, I took an oath on my family Bible to uphold the law, and as an elected public official, my personal belief cannot prevent me from issuing the licenses as required.” Parker County Clerk Jeane Brunson echoed the remarks, noting that the county is working on creating gender neutral marriage applications and saying, “As an elected official, I have taken an oath to execute the duties of the office, and that I will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States and of the State of Texas without subjecting those actions to my own personal values. I believe you want nothing more from your elected County Clerk.”

Nothing more — and certainly nothing less. If your job is to serve your community — every member of it — then that’s what you do. You can’t as a firefighter decide you’re not going to put out a blaze in an atheist’s home. You can’t as a postal worker decide you’re not going to deliver mail to a transgender person’s apartment. And you should not be permitted, as a county clerk, to decide your private feelings overrule your official duties. Your obligations are spelled out in your job description. They include issuing marriage licenses. If that’s a problem, then I guess it’s time to look for another job, huh?

These rogue clerks need to be fired from their jobs and, in instances where they are defying legitimate court orders, charged with contempt of court and put in jail.  But it is important to understand that all of this moaning and carrying on is really about something else much larger that blogger friend Bob Felton hit squarely on the head:

And it is no coincidence that racial antagonisms are flaring-up just as gay rights are progressing, for the latter reprises the former defeat, and both bespeak the same thing: Widespread public rejection of slavish submission to the scribblings of Bronze Age anonymities. The present discontents are not merely about gay rights; that is only the focal point. It is the wholesale rejection of the innately degrading premises of the Abrahamic faiths writ large which provokes, to the mind of believers, the existential crisis alluded to by the mantra “religious liberty.”

Mac Brunson, Albert the Pious, and all the rest, know perfectly well that their religious liberty is not threatened. Their churches will remain open for business, they will continue unimpeded to humiliate themselves with preposterous claims that the Bible is inerrant, nobody will arrest them for standing in a pulpit and howling that the Invisible Wizard’s (poorly expressed, locally interpreted) rules must precede the laws of legislatures and their interpretations by the courts.

The pastors understand, however, that their day has ended — that they are no longer their community’s wise man, sage, informal moral leader without portfolio, and their congregations understand that they no longer enjoy the presumption of goodness, that they are somehow “better” people. They can still believe whatever they like, they can still preach whatever they like, they can still enforce whatever rules they like in their clubhouses and homes — but they should expect ridicule and disdain from “the world” rather than admiration and deference. They have sustained not merely a political defeat, but the rejection of an entire culture.

As the Christofascist become increasingly marginalized by rational members of society, their outrage and fury over their lost sense of entitlement will likely increase.  The irony is that the selfishness and obnoxious demands for special rights will likely only hasten the decline of respect for their ignorance embracing beliefs.  In the last analysis, the sooner the Abrahamic faiths become dead religions, the better off the world will be.

 

"Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner" - Another Christofascist Lie

In the wake of Friday's historic marriage ruling, some of the Christofascists are consumed with spittle flecked rants threatening civil disobedience and other forms of resistance to the Supreme Court's ruling.  Others are trying to appear less extreme and are repeating a standard Christofascist lie that they hate the sin - ie., homosexuality - but love the sinner.  Frankly, it's a lie and a crock of horseshit in my view.  You do not "love" someone when you try to deprive someone of civil rights and equality under the law.  Or when you depict gays as not much better than diseased vermin and/or would be child molesters.  

Thus, "hate the sin, love the sinner" is merely how Christian bigots try to (i) avoid facing the fact that they are deliberately discriminating against and harming others, and (ii) convince others that they are not foul bigots. It's the height of hypocrisy, something that I believe sadly is the number one hallmark of self-styled conservative Christians. It also ignores several realities, the first being that "deeply held religious belief" has been used for centuries to justify/excuse hate, bigotry, discrimination against others and far worse horrors.  A piece in Religion Dispatches lays blame at the feet of anti-gay Christofascists.  Here are excerpts:

LGBTQ homelessness and suicide are natural consequences of the perpetuation of views denying the full humanity of lesbian, gay, bi, pan, trans, queer, and all non-heteronormative individuals. Any theology rejecting their full affirmation is clearly tantamount to such denial, as we now have a wealth of testimony that the vast majority of LGBTQ individuals do not experience their sexual orientation or gender identity as a choice. If you like, you can believe in a tyrannical god who creates some people only to condemn them for something innate to their created personhood. I will not.

Those who are celebrating the “tipping point,” it seems to me, are failing to hold their co-religionists accountable for the harm they have done to all of us who could not conform to the demands of the fundamentalist evangelical worldview—particularly to members of the LGBTQ community. They are also de facto refusing to acknowledge their own complicity in that harm.

There are calls to drop the hurtful and condescending “love the sinner, hate the sin” rhetoric, which is surely an improvement, but it’s also an attempt to square the circle. As long as the belief persists that same-sex partnerships and transgender identities are inherently sinful, this belief will do psychological harm to LGBTQ people born into evangelical communities.

I appreciate the Christians, including evangelicals, who are trying to do better, those who are living up to Christ’s example of radical inclusivity that I see as the spirit of the Gospel. The problem is that an awful lot of Christians, particularly in evangelical culture, continue to fetishize the letter and lose sight of the spirit. And not only that, but instead of accepting that we live in a pluralist society, too many of these evangelicals, with a huge assist from conservative Catholics, go off in the name of “religious freedom” to fight tooth and nail to keep members of the LGBTQ community from enjoying the same rights and freedoms they do.

The second is that the United States of America was founded as a SECULAR nation with no established religion. One's religious beliefs or lack thereof should have ZERO bearing on one's civil legal rights. For those who have not done so, read the preamble of Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (which predates the U.S. Constitution) and see how Jefferson tears apart those who would link one's civil rights to one's compliance with particular religious beliefs. Stated another way, Jefferson - and other Founding Fathers did so as well - eloquently condemned the very behavior we see virtually daily from the so-called Christian Right (who are neither Christian or right) - i,e, those whom I refer to as the Christofascists:

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;

That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,

That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;

That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry,

Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.

I remain convinced that if one wants to know why 34% of Millennials have walked away from organized religion, look no farther than those "godly Christians" who are condemning yesterday's marriage ruling. These "Christians" truly make the Pharisees in the Gospels look like nice decent folk in comparison.

The other thing that the Supreme Court noted in yesterday's ruling is that sexual orientation is something that is immutable. It's a part of you that you cannot change. You can try to deny it and try to pretend it's not an unchangeable part of you, but that is only an exercise in self-delusion. In contrast, religion and religious belief are 100% a choice and can be changed simply by walking away from past indoctrination and thinking for one self.

What Evangelical Christians Can Learn from Gay Rights Wins

As noted in a post yesterday, a new poll shows that more Americans say they would be with a gay presidential candidate than they would with one who is an evangelical Christian.   The evangelical crowd is truly killing the Christian brand and fueling the rise f the so-called "Nones" who have completely walked away from organized religion and for good reasons.  The family values crowd has made being an evangelical Christian synonymous with being hate filled, bigoted, most likely racist, and demanding of special rights while trampling on the rights of everyone else.   In the minds of more and more Americans, evangelical Christians simply are not nice and decent people (an accurate view, in my view).  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the decline of the Christian brand and argues that these people could learn from the success of the gay rights movement, something like to be anathema to them.  Here are highlights:

[T]he Christian right still wields considerable political power in this country. But outside the realm of the Republican presidential primary process—and maybe soon within it—the religious right is losing wattage fast, and I can report to you happily that the movement has only itself to blame.

Here’s a fascinating little politico-cultural data point that may have blown past you this week and would have me were it not for Rod Dreher at The American Conservative: A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows that more Americans say they feel enthusiastic about or comfortable with an openly gay or lesbian presidential candidate than an openly evangelical Christian one. Yep. Three out of five, or 61 percent, said they’d welcome a gay candidate, while just 52 percent would say the same of an evangelical.

The comparison is instructive, because if you contrast these two movements and their relative political success in recent years, you see a very clear distinction that should (and does) make Republicans nervous. You see why the LGBT movement is winning and why religious conservatives are losing—and further, why evangelicals, the foot soldiers of the religious right, probably can’t do anything about it without in effect ceasing to be evangelicals (at least of the stripe they’ve been for 30-plus years).

[A] very long story very short, but in essence, over time, the leaders of the [gay rights] movement saw that it was more important to persuade public opinion than to shock it. And so the public-relations strategy around the movement for same-sex marriage became “we’re just like you.” And it worked, in all the ways you already know about. 

In other words, the LGBT movement figured out that it had to find a way to get people who didn’t agree to agree.

Now let’s look at the Christian right. Has it done anything over the years to change its approach, try to widen its reach? Basically, no. Evangelicals care about the issues they’ve cared about for three decades.

Lately, the big issue for Christian conservatives is religious freedom. Are they winning that one? No. Public opinion is divided . . . . But many polls, like this one by Reuters, find that majorities oppose even a private employers’ “right” to deny contraceptive coverage to women.  Americans are against the religious right, too, on state laws like the one Governor Mike Pence originally tried to pass in Indiana, and which evangelical conservatives are pushing elsewhere. 

What is the religious right’s version of “we’re just like you”? I don’t think there is one. Because they are not like the rest of us, at least when it comes to politics. The rest of us are a bunch of different things (many quite religious). But we, motley as we are, believe in separation of church and state and the principle that as far as public life goes, the Constitution quite effortlessly trumps the Bible. And those among this larger “we” who are religious think religion demands chiefly that we behave compassionately toward the less fortunate, not that we refuse to bake cakes for matrimonially minded lesbians.

At long last, the real moral majority is winning.

As I have stated many times, I look forward to the day when evangelical Christians are a detested and scorned minority unwelcome in polite society.  They have ruined the lives of others for years and years, and it is far past time that they reap the treatment they have inflicted on others.