Think Progress: Kansas bill claims LGBTQ community is a religion to justify every kind of discrimination against it

But what makes HB 2320 truly unique is how it frames the rationale for such a massive reversal: It asserts that LGBTQ identities constitute a religion, and if the state of Kansas were to support any law that recognizes that religion, it would be in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.[...]

In other words, being gay is a matter of faith. And while It may not be an institutionalized religion, it is — these lawmakers assert — the equivalent of secular humanism, which was recognized as a religion by the Supreme Court in a unanimous 1961 decision overturning a Maryland state requirement that candidates for public office profess a belief in God. The government can’t pass laws that require a person “to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion,” the Court explained, nor can it privilege religions that include a belief in God over nonbelievers or over religions that do not include such a belief.[...]

Though all seven of the lawmakers who sponsored HB 2320 are white, they contend at length that LGBTQ equality is particularly offensive to people of color. Much of the bill is inexplicably dedicated to drawing a distinction between race and LGBTQ identities despite the fact that it’s entirely superfluous to the bill’s stated purpose. In this way, it echoes a long history of equality opponents trying to “drive a wedge” between LGBTQ people against people of color.[...]

Leaving no doubt as to whether these lawmakers intended to equate bestiality with homosexuality, the bill explains, “All forms of parody marriages equally erode community standards of decency.” As marriage between a man and a woman does not contribute to the same erosion, the state has a compelling interest in providing for this sort of matrimony exclusively. Furthermore, as some taxpayers believe that such “parody marriages” are immoral, taxpayer money that supports benefits for those marriages violates the consciences of these taxpayers simply by mandating that they pay taxes.

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Vox: Jeff Sessions announces a religious liberty task force to combat “dangerous” secularism

The task force will be spearheaded by Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy Beth Williams. The Advocate reports that in 2010, Panuccio, as an attorney, defended supporters of Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California for nearly five years. More specific details of the task force’s structure and organization have not yet been announced.

Sessions painted a nightmarish portrait of what he described as a lack of religious liberty protections plaguing American society. “We have gotten to the point,” he said, “where courts have held that morality cannot be a basis for law, where ministers are fearful to affirm, as they understand it, holy writ from the pulpit, and where one group can actively target religious groups by labeling them a ‘hate group’ on the basis of their sincerely held religious beliefs.” [...]

He’s advocating for the kind of Christian nationalism — blending patriotism and evangelical Christianity — that the administration has consistently used to legitimize its aims and shore up its evangelical base. [...]

Sessions’s vision of religious liberty as, fundamentally, active and interventionist government support of religious identity seems to be in line with his wider political philosophy. Last month, for example, Sessions used the Bible verse Romans 13 to justify separating migrant families at the US-Mexico border. He used it on the grounds that the verse — part of a letter written by St. Paul urging an early Christian Roman community not to participate in a political uprising — legitimized absolute submission to government authority.

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FiveThirtyEight: Support For Same-Sex Marriage Isn’t Unanimous

A majority of conservative Republicans (58 percent), Republicans overall (51 percent), Mormons (53 percent), white evangelical Protestants (58 percent) and adults in Alabama (51 percent) oppose same-sex marriage, according to a survey released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute. [...]

A majority of black people (52 percent), Hispanics (61 percent) and white people (63 percent) back same-sex marriage. The majority of people in all but six states support it. And even in those six states — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia — only in Alabama are opponents an outright majority.  [...]

But I think it’s worth looking closely at the 39 percent of Americans who don’t support same-sex marriage, including the 30 percent who outright oppose it. That group really matters because it includes a majority bloc in the Republican Party, which dominates U.S. politics nationally and in many states. They haven’t exactly given up on this issue — the question of same-sex marriage itself has become less of a political football, but LGBT rights more generally may be taking its place.  [...]

PRRI also asked Americans whether they support small businesses being able to deny services to gay or lesbian people if doing so would conflict with the business owner’s religious beliefs. Overall, 33 percent of Americans support that idea, while 60 percent oppose it. The majority of conservative Republicans (59 percent), Republicans overall (52 percent), Mormons (53 percent) and white evangelical Protestants (53 percent) support such religious-based denials of services.

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FiveThirtyEight: The Christian Right Has A New Strategy On Gay Marriage

The case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, represents a pivotal new legal strategy for the Christian conservative movement grounded in religious liberty claims rather than arguments that the law should reflect their values. But it’s also a sign that the Christian right — which once professed to speak for America’s “moral majority” — is tacitly conceding a loss in its long-standing battle over gay rights. While religious conservatives have consistently cast themselves as at odds with dominant liberal, secular forces, this case indicates that they are beginning to adapt to life as a true cultural minority.

“Christian conservatives used to try to promote traditional morality for everyone, but now there seems to be a recognition that they just aren’t going to win over the culture,” said Andrew R. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati. “So they’re going to the courts to argue that they’re vulnerable like other minorities and they need protections from the broader culture.”[...]

Phillips’ lawyers aren’t the only ones making this case. The issue of “religious liberty” has become an increasingly high priority for the broader conservative Christian population, particularly white evangelical Protestants, who are overwhelmingly politically conservative and traditionally seen as the core of the Christian right. Surveys by the Barna Group, a research organization that focuses on Christian trends, found that the number of evangelicals (white and nonwhite) who said that religious freedom in the U.S. has become restricted over the past decade rose from 60 percent in 2012 to 77 percent in 2015. Similarly, according to the Pew Research Center, while only 18 percent of white evangelical Protestant churchgoers reported that they had heard about attacks on religious liberty from the pulpit in recent months in 2012, a survey from 2016 found that 43 percent of white evangelicals said they had recently heard clergy speak in defense of religious liberty. [...]

It turns out that both may be true. Barna’s polling shows that evangelicals are increasingly concerned about protecting their own values and way of life, even at the expense of others’: The number of evangelicals who agree that traditional Judeo-Christian values must be given preference in the U.S. rose from 54 percent in 2012 to 76 percent in 2015, while the number of evangelicals who agree that no one set of values should dominate the country declined from 37 percent to 25 percent over the same period.

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The Guardian: The church leaders' campaign against marriage equality harms those who are already hurt

There is a pattern to this behaviour; first, claim to be protecting an institution, often “marriage” or “the family”, then attack a reform designed to protect actual people from exclusion, prejudice or a denial of equal rights.

This practice has a history in Australia. Rightwing politicians and some conservative Christians opposed no-fault divorce laws in order to protect the social value of the family unit. Fringe Christian groups resisted attempts to reform marital rape laws in this country – as did conservative MPs who cited defence of the family as their motivation – ensuring it took approximately 22 years for change to be fully implemented at a state level.

Not coincidentally, it took approximately the same period to decriminalise homosexuality across our nation, a process that was not completed in Tasmania until 1997. Again, rightwing politicians and conservative Christian groups delayed the process and battled against the reform, increasingly using language adopted from the religious right of the United States – note how the nebulous, and rather American, use of the word “freedom” has increasingly entered into the Australian conservative religious lexicon. [...]

Religious freedom in this nation will not be destroyed by marriage equality. “Family values” – at least those modelled by the Jesus of the gospels – are more than safe. This open letter is religious assault on another reform that is designed to advance marriage and family as protective institutions in our society. We are used to Christian conservatives opposing reform in this country. The tragedy is the way this adds harm to the already hurt and excluded that Christ invites us all to protect and include as he did.

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The Conversation: How the same-sex marriage vote will impact on human rights and democracy

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s promise of same-sex marriage by Christmas will almost certainly be honoured. We will continue to argue for some time whether the long, expensive and emotionally charged process that’s delivered this change was worth it. [...]

Labor is managing its divisions smartly: clearly the handful of anti-marriage MPs were told they could vote no provided they did nothing to delay or water down the legislation. The same is not true of the government parties, where the marriage debate is caught up in the increasing febrile battles for control.

There will be further attempts in the lower house to introduce “religious freedom” protections into the legislation, despite the fact that it already exempts religious institutions from having to perform same-sex marriages. [...]

“Human rights” are an abstract notion, which are created, protected and destroyed by political action. Most countries do not recognise human rights as encompassing sexual orientation and gender identity. This has been the subject of increasingly heated debates within United Nations forums. [...]

But most LGBTI Australians are very much like the rest of the country. The week after the poll result the Perth Pride committee banned refugee advocates from their parade.

Although the ruling was retracted under criticism, it was a reminder that the coalition around marriage was often born of immediate self-interest. Despite the language of rights and equality, many marriage advocates have little concern for broader issues.

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The Conversation: A philosopher argues why no one has the right to refuse services to LGBT people

Ever since the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that gay people have the right to marry, those upset by this ruling have shifted their strategy from denying the right to limiting its enforcement.

Even if gay people have a right to marry, they argue, people also have the liberty to practice their religion as they wish. Accordingly, they claim, they cannot be forced to “aid or abet” those seeking to marry partners of the same sex. [...]

Rights, in contrast, are stronger. They not only give us these freedoms, but they also protect these freedoms from any kind of interference. But not all liberties are protected by rights. When people talk about religious liberty, it is accordingly important to understand what kind of liberty they might mean. For it might not be a liberty that is protected from the kind of interference that is at issue in these cases. [...]

So when people claim that aiding and abetting gay marriage would infringe on their religious liberty, in most cases what they must mean is that this would violate their particular conception of positive liberty – their particular conception of how we each should live, a conception that is based on their religious views. [...]

Indeed, for those who have any doubt about this, simply imagine what it was like to experience life as a black person under Jim Crow. One cannot imagine being subject to these kinds of restrictions and still thinking of oneself as truly free. The protection against arbitrary treatment is accordingly central to almost every possible conception of the good and plan of life a freedom loving person might select.

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FiveThirtyEight: The Identity Politics Of The Trump Administration

The administration is not proposing less intervention from the federal government, which is the typical Republican approach, but rather it is seeking to wield federal power, just as Obama did. But whereas Obama’s policies focused on protecting African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, people who are gay or transgender, and other groups that most Americans view as marginalized, Trump and his team are focusing on defending different groups: Christians, police officers, victims of crimes by undocumented immigrants, and people who fear Latino immigrants are taking their jobs or redefining U.S. culture, among others. [...]

The Department of Justice, and law-enforcement agencies generally, have broad discretion in terms of what crimes to prioritize, what kinds of punishment to pursue and how they operate. Both Obama and Trump have used that authority — or, in Trump’s case, pledged to use that authority — to focus resources on the issues they and their voters care about most. And Trump, like Obama, is trying to push local law-enforcement agencies to emphasize those same priorities. [...]

But the Trump administration, despite its generally get-tough posture, does have a soft spot for one group that has technically violated the law: those addicted to opioids. At the launch of the president’s task force on opioid abuse in March, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is leading the task force, likened drug addiction to cancer, heart disease and diabetes, saying addiction is a disease that people should not be ashamed to talk about. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the states facing the highest rates of death from drug overdoses are West Virginia, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Ohio. Three of those states — Kentucky, New Hampshire and West Virginia — have smaller black and Latino populations than the national average. The opioid problem has hit heavily white areas of America, and some experts say that explains why it has not led to the type of tough-on-crime policies that came amid the crack epidemic in black areas in the 1980s and 1990s. [...]

Studies on voucher programs have not backed up the administration’s enthusiastic claims about the programs’ benefits, finding instead that students who use school vouchers learn about as much as or less than those enrolled in traditional public schools. But one clear beneficiary will be Christian private schools, which draw in the vast majority of students who attend private schools through voucher programs in many states.

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FiveThirtyEight: Imagining President Pence

The events that precede Pence’s swearing-in would no doubt shape his tenure in ways that can’t be predicted. But the make and measure of a man is not wholly defined by his circumstances. Pence is a political figure of specific principle and ideology, and his past may give us hints about the president he would be. A reading of his political history reveals a devoted adherent to an unbending conservative worldview but also a man chastened by the realities of governing a society undergoing profound change. Above all, it shows a political survivor, attuned to the delicate dynamics of a capricious White House — and perhaps patient enough to be playing the long game of the Trump presidency. 

During his time as governor of Indiana, Pence was largely known for his social conservatism, but before that, while he was serving in Congress, he was a budget-slashing tea party-type before there was a tea party to be part of. If he were to become the president, Pence, who once called himself an “unregenerate supply-sider,” would likely use his time in office to push for the same thing that he’s been working toward over the last two decades: cuts to the federal budget along with a deeply socially conservative agenda. [...]

In 2005, the conservative publication Human Events named Pence their “Man of the Year.” At the time, Pence headed the Republican Study Committee, a group of far-right House conservatives fed up with what Human Events deemed the “big-government conservatism” that had “ruled the roost during the Bush years in Washington.” Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, as Congress sought to fund the recovery process on the Gulf Coast, Pence and his congressional allies proposed $500 billion in cuts to federal programs, including Medicare prescription drug benefits, to pay for the rebuilding. Pence served as a public face of the proposal that conservatives called “Operation Offset.” “We simply can’t allow a catastrophe of nature to become a catastrophe of debt for our children and grandchildren,” Pence said at the time. [...]

While these decisions to act might seem like rudimentary responses to moments of crisis, they tell us something about how Pence balances pragmatism with ideology. Put under enough pressure, he cracks. They suggest that a President Pence could settle on moderate actions when faced with economic pressure or an outpouring of negative public opinion. Even ideologues read the papers and polls and feel the pinch of unpopularity.

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Salon: Most Americans don’t want “religious freedom” laws that allow anti-LGBT discrimination

A majority of Americans oppose denying services to LGBT individuals in the name of religion, according to a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute. Sixty-one percent of respondents were against giving faith-based groups or private individuals the religious exemption to, say, refuse to cater a lesbian wedding, or to refuse to sign the marriage certificates of same-sex couples, as Kim Davis, a clerk in Rowan County, Ky., made national headlines for doing in 2015.

Just one religious group believes that people like Davis should have faith-based exemptions to protect their right of conscience: evangelical Christians. Fifty percent of evangelicals believed that it should be legal to discriminate in the name of faith, as opposed to the 42 percent who were against that idea — a surprisingly slim majority for this influential slice of the GOP electorate. [...]

It’s worth noting that the ERLC is the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the few denominations to support legislation like FADA. Even Mormons, a population that’s heavily conservative, are against discrimination in the name of faith, with 52 percent opposing the legal right to deny services to same-sex couples. In 2015, the Church of Latter-day Saints helped pass a nondiscrimination law in Utah preventing workers from being fired on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, the first such legislation passed by a red state.

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The Huffington Post: LGBT Rights And Religious Refusals In Mississippi: What's Actually At Stake?

It’s no surprise Governor Phil Bryant of Mississippi is one of the few prominent Republicans left defending Donald Trump. Governor Bryant already proved his stubbornness when he was the only public official to appeal the enjoining of Mississippi’s radical anti-LGBT legislation passed this spring. Lawyers on both sides are currently gearing up for briefing and arguments in the Fifth Circuit over Mississippi’s religious refusal bill, HB 1523. HB 1523 provides explicit, special protections designed to allow individuals and businesses in Mississippi to discriminate against LGBT individuals and families if they believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, sex should be reserved to such a marriage, and/or that the gender a person is assigned at birth is immutable. [...]

Epstein fails to account for any of these grave realities on the ground. He also seems to not understand the reality of the bill itself. He imagines HB 1523 as limited to private “market-regulated” spaces, but the bill’s scope extends far beyond that. HB 1523 prevents the state from interfering in a foster parent’s decision to “guide, instruct, or raise” a child in accordance with the favored moral beliefs. One section of the bill allows counselors to deny mental health services to a lesbian teenager struggling with coming out on the basis that the provider believes marriage is between a man and a woman (without any requirement of a referral). The bill extends this protection to state employees, such as a school counselor at a public school, which for many young people is their only access to mental health services. This is in a state, mind you, with one of the highest risks of suicide for LGBT youth. There is nothing hyperbolic about saying that this is about life and death for LGBT individuals in Mississippi. When mental health care providers turn away HIV positive patients, doctors and public health professionals have already warned us what the likely outcome will be.

Richard Epstein believes that although racial anti-discrimination protections were previously justified as a “necessary corrective against massive abuses of state power under Jim Crow. Thankfully, that risk is gone today.” That may better describe where Richard Epstein teaches law and contemplates his academic theories: New York City. But for LGBT Mississippians who received KKK flyers in their driveways, Epstein’s assertion that the risk is gone is laughable. Don’t take my New York word for it: listen to the voices coming directly from Mississippi. For LGBT citizens in Mississippi there’s not just the “risk” of a Jim Crow South, it’s their daily reality.

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The Atlantic: Why North Carolina Judges Can Still Refuse to Perform Same-Sex Marriages

North Carolina is one of the only places in the United States where judges can refuse to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies. If magistrates have a religious objection to same-sex marriage, state law says, they can tag themselves out of issuing any marriage licenses, for either gay or straight couples, for at least six months. In the past year, various groups have sued the state over religious accommodations for North Carolina judges. But as two decisions this week show, they haven’t been very successful so far. [...]

Not many states have put laws like this in place, even if legislators have wanted to. North Carolina’s law was passed in June of 2015, shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage to be legal. Some legislatures, like Florida, Minnesota, South Carolina, and Virginia, have introduced similar legislation but have not yet passed it. Others have been thrown out: A sweeping law in Mississippi, for example, created exemptions for judges, along with select exemptions for other people who have religious objections to same-sex marriage or gender-reassignment surgery, but a federal judge blocked it from going into effect in July. The other major state that has taken up this issue is Kentucky, where the Rowan County clerk Kim Davis was jailed for refusing to sign same-sex-marriage licenses or affix her office’s name to the certificates. A law signed in April addressed that issue by removing the requirement that a clerk’s signature or office name be included on marriage licenses.

North Carolina’s judge law doesn’t affect a huge number of public officials: One of the suits alleges that “at least 32 magistrates across North Carolina who had previously performed marriages for opposite-sex couples invoked religious beliefs to recuse themselves.” But it has become a symbol in a much bigger fight. Now that same-sex marriage is legal in the United States, what rights should religious people have to avoid involvement in the ceremonies based on moral objections? Legislatures are also dealing with this question when it comes to other LGBT rights: Less than half of states forbid discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in housing, hiring, and public accommodations, and LGBT advocates are pushing for new legislation in the states where those protections don’t exist.

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Time: How Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law Is Being Used to Defend Child Abuse and Other Crimes

Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act—signed into law in 2015 by Republican Gov. Mike Pence—was initially viewed by some as a counterweight to the legalization of same-sex marriage across the U.S. because it would’ve allowed businesses in the state to deny goods and services to same-sex couples based on employees’ religious objections. That is no longer an issue since the law was amended to bar discriminatory behavior—but the act has since taken on an unexpected new life: as a defense for criminal conduct like child abuse and drug use. So far, at least four people in Indiana have used the law to argue that their religion excuses them from actions that would otherwise be considered crimes—and legal experts expect more cases to follow. [...]

“Ms. Thaing believed in the teachers of the Bible that state, ‘Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol,’” a Hebrew word loosely translated as hell, Bowes said in court documents. [...]

Curry says his office has seen three cases involving the RFRA as a defense, including one challenging Indiana’s marijuana law by the First Church of Cannabis, which argues that its church members—”Cannaterians”—should be able to smoke marijuana as a religious sacrament. Indianapolis police have told churchgoers that they would be arrested if they did so. The lawsuit is pending. An additional case involving Curry’s office includes an Indiana resident who is arguing that his religious beliefs compel him to avoid paying income taxes.

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Los Angeles Times: Judge blocks Mississippi law on objections to gay marriage

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves wrote that the title, text and history of the law show it is "the state's attempt to put LGBT citizens back in their place" in response to last summer's Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage nationwide.

"In physics, every action has its equal and opposite reaction," Reeves wrote. "In politics, every action has its predictable overreaction." [...]

The law sought to protect three beliefs: That marriage is only between a man and a woman; that sex should only take place in such a marriage; and that a person's gender is determined at birth and cannot be altered.

It would allow county clerks to cite religious objections to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and would protect merchants who refuse services to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people. It could affect adoptions and foster care, business practices and school bathroom policies. [...]

"As a result, Mississippi will no longer be permitted to favor some 'religious beliefs' over others, and the civil rights of LGBT Mississippians will not be subordinated to the religious beliefs of only certain religious groups," said Kaplan, who represents the Campaign for Southern Equality.

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The Atlantic: Most American Christians Believe They’re Being Persecuted

Many, many Christians believe they are subject to religious discrimination in the United States. A new report from the Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings offers evidence: Almost half of Americans say discrimination against Christians is as big of a problem as discrimination against other groups, including blacks and minorities. Three-quarters of Republicans and Trump supporters said this, and so did nearly eight out of 10 white evangelical Protestants. Of the latter group, six in 10 believe that although America once was a Christian nation, it is no longer—a huge jump from 2012. [...]

Forty-six percent of those surveyed said immigration from Mexico and Central America has been too high in recent years. When asked the same question about immigrants from “predominantly Christian countries,” though, only 10 percent of people said immigration has been too high. The irony is that this is essentially the same question, phrased two different ways: Latin American countries are overwhelming Christian—in many places, even more so than the United States. When Americans think of those immigrants as Christians, rather than foreign nationals, they’re more likely to open their arms in welcome. [...]

In all of this, the standard caveats about polling apply. No single identity factor can explain why people answer surveys the way they do. Education, for example, makes a huge difference in how people responded to the question about discrimination against Christians: Only 38 percent of college-educated whites agreed that discrimination against Christians is a problem, compared to 62 percent of their working-class peers.

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Quartz: The simple reason so many US businesses openly support LGBT rights

The “competitive edge” pertains both to commodities and labor. Reflecting upon the hundreds of businesses that supported the marriage equality movement, Todd Sears, the founder of Out Leadership, explains how company cohesion and sustainability is linked to employee equality. “Businesses that had already adopted policies that treated every employee equally [prior to marriage equality in 2015] saw the negative effects of a state-based patchwork policy on marriage equality,” he said. “It complicated their strategies and made it more difficult to locate talent in states that lacked protections for married LGBT couples.” [...]

“We’re already seeing that businesses are standing up for equality when it comes to the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts and other discriminatory legislation that are rapidly proliferating in states around the country,” Todd observes. “In Indiana, opposition from the business community forced the government to back down from the RFRA they passed last year; in Georgia, Governor Deal listened to the voice of business and vetoed the bill that came before him.” [...]

Importantly, allies are also incredibly attentive to corporate treatment of the LGBT community. The Center for Talent Innovation’s 2016 report, Out in the World: Securing LGBT Rights in the Global Marketplace, found that “71% of LGBT individuals and 82% of allies say they are more likely to purchase a good or service from a company that supports LGBT equality.”

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Los Angeles Times: Faith-based colleges say anti-discrimination bill would infringe on their religious freedom

“These universities essentially have a license to discriminate, and students have absolutely no recourse,” Lara said Tuesday in a hearing before the Assembly Higher Education Committee approved the bill. “Universities are supposed to be a place where students feel safe and can learn without fear of discrimination or harassment.”

Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) cited standards of conduct at some schools that prohibit same-sex relationships and cross-dressing. Lara said enforcement of such policies could be challenged in court under his proposal.

Some 32 private universities could be affected by the bill, according to Kristen F. Soares, president of the Assn. of Independent Colleges and Universities, which has been representing many campuses. [...]

The universities most affected are those that get government funds or enroll students who receive state financial aid, including Biola, Fresno Pacific University, Simpson University and Jessup.

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Salon: Religious extremism in the age of Trump: Empowered radicals are pushing harder than ever to legalize discrimination

These people do not appear to have gotten the memo that once marriage equality was affirmed by the Supreme Court the issue was settled. In fact, that ruling sparked a coordinated effort among conservative religious organizations to  roll back gay rights wherever they can. The report says that in 2016 over 100 anti- LGBT equality bills have already been introduced in statehouses around the country. And there is every indication that these activities are picking up speed. [...]

The lesson here is that even as the Trump craziness dominates the conversation and our civic life seems to be morphing into something unrecognizable, more familiar political activity carries on at all levels of society. I recall the feeling of euphoria when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality being tempered by the knowledge that reproductive rights had been under siege for decades despite Roe vs Wade.  We’re already seeing the battle lines expand on LGBT rights from marriage to bathrooms.

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The Atlantic: America’s Profound Gender Anxiety

But why did bathrooms come next? These bills seem to be about something slightly different. They’re not objections to what people do—having gay sex, for example, or getting married to a person of the same sex. They’re objections to what people are, which isn’t tied to any particular act. It doesn’t really matter who transgender people have sex with, or if they have sex at all. What matters is their status: If a person is designated a boy or girl at birth, the objectors say, that’s what determines his or her gender for life. [...]

The two motivations—conviction and bigotry—are difficult to tease apart. Particularly in the United States, a country that remains more religious that its Western peers, faith and culture are in a feedback loop, complementing, responding, and reacting to one another. This is especially true when it comes to trans people in public bathrooms. Wisdom from the Bible can be brought to bear on any question, but on this issue, the ideas at stake are foundational. They are part of “the way of reading the Bible, going back to Genesis” said R. Marie Griffith, a professor of religion and politics at Washington University in St. Louis. “There’s this belief that God created man, and out of man, he created woman. And these are really crystal-clear categories. There’s something very deep and fundamental about that for the Christians who have … a way of thinking about the Bible as the word of God.” [...]

But more broadly, this is also a question about gender roles. In a recent PRRI / The Atlantic poll, 42 percent of Americans said they believe society is becoming “too soft and feminine.” Thirty-nine percent said they believe society is better off “when men and women stick to the jobs and tasks they are naturally suited for,” including 44 percent of Republicans and 58 percent of white evangelical Protestants. These numbers suggest nervousness about fluid gender identities—and that America isn’t even close to a consensus that men and women should choose the way they act.

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The Guardian: For Haredi Jews secular Zionism remains a religious heresy

Haredi theology began as a reaction to the 18th century Jewish enlightenment, the Haskalah, a movement that aimed at the modernisation of Jewish culture in Europe. Whereas the Haskalah wanted to end Jewish segregation and encourage greater engagement with modern ideas and secular society, traditionalists saw this as a threat to Jewish religious identity. Thus the Haredim stuck resolutely to their traditional clothes and ways. They would chat in Yiddish and only pray in Hebrew, too holy a language for social intercourse. And when the secular movement of modern Zionism started to take shape, they opposed this too: only God could bring about the new Israel, they argued. Trying to pre-empt God’s action through secular nationalism was a heresy. Judaism is fundamentally a religious community, they argued, and modern notions of race and nationhood are alien to it. Thus, for many Haredim, the state of Israel remains almost sacrilegious. [...]

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