If you want to see how bad the Left's war on orthodox religious believers is getting, here's another example. About one-eighth of the federal government's $4 trillion budget goes to the approximately 150,000 private sector contractors, about $500 billion. Out of that 150,000, about 2,000 are religious contractors, i.e. organizations with a primarily religious mission providing services to the government such as supplying military chaplains, running charitable social services programs, doing scientific research, and more.
Some Republicans have noticed the pressures being put on religious groups by left-wing social engineers to compromise their beliefs on sexual morality and the nature of being and so have introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would protect their freedom of religion from government interference. Which you would think would be covered by the First Amendment, but is not because the Supreme Court muddied those waters long ago. But because in 2014 Obama mandated that all government contractors embrace transgenderism and homosexuality in their practices, those religious contractors were in a precarious position.
From the reaction of the Left, you would think this amendment had declared open season on LGBTQ people. From the American Spectator article linked above:
So, you may be asking, why are the Democrats and a few Republicans howling at the moon? On the one hand, the move is political and designed for political self-preservation. They need to cater to part of their base. I don’t fault them for that; however, rather than making their views known in a balanced way, they are balkanizing the electorate in order to score cheap political points for Congressional candidates as well as hand Mrs. Bill Clinton another talking point. However, this issue transcends politics and the Democrats know it. The long-term and substantive ramifications of this anti-religious maneuver are disturbing and, at some level dangerous, because it seeks to silence people of faith, in this case, by pushing them out of the federal marketplace. It is borderline fascistic.
This is all in line with the current thread of discourse in our society as I've previously mentioned: "If you disagree with me, then you hate me and wish to harm me." There is no middle ground. LGBTQ and their political allies see this as all or nothing. If we don't capitulate and agree that there is absolutely nothing wrong with their lifestyle choices and self-identity then we are haters fomenting violence against them and every possible means--from political ostracizing to loss of livelihood to indoctrination of children--is a valid defense.
In this climate, how can we defend ourselves? Especially since the American public, slowly but surely, is falling back in the face of this. Nobody wants to be a bad guy, so the average American starts to bend. Whereas a clear majority of Americans a decade or more ago agreed that the law should protect the traditional understanding of marriage as between a man and a woman, that majority has been eroding.
The haters gonna hate and the center will not hold.
