The second explanation, and I think the more powerful one, has to do with LGBTQ rights. Religious conservatives have lost important LGBTQ rights cases, including, most prominently, Obergefell [which established same-sex marriage as a constitutional right]. So I think that’s where a lot of the tension is coming from.
But that doesn’t clear up the mystery entirely either, because the politics of LBGTQ rights are such that Obergefell probably won’t be reversed even by a court that includes, say, Brett Kavanaugh [who is nominated to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy]. And President Donald Trump hasn’t come out against gay rights, even though he has made some changes that are unhelpful to LGBTQ interests. So I think some mystery still remains as to where exactly the sense of victimization the attorney general expresses comes from. [...]
In 1990, all of that changed, when the Court decided Employment Division v. Smith, about Native American use of peyote. In that case, the Court announced a new rule, which was that normally religious actors would not receive exemptions from general laws. So unless the laws were discriminating against them in some way, they wouldn’t get exemptions.
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