The Christian right claims marriage equality is persecution
While most people might have forgotten Kim Davis, she hasn’t moved on. She has spent the last decade proclaiming her alleged victimhood to establish her Christian martyr bona fides. When she ran for reelection in her rural Appalachian county in 2018, she lost by 8%. Now she’s asking the Supreme Court to rule that the only way to preserve the religious freedom of anti-gay bigots is to strip marriage rights away from LGBTQ people.
Unfortunately, it’s not as crazy as it seems — especially after this year’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which functionally allowed a minority of hyper-religious parents to ban all books mentioning LGBTQ people from schools on the grounds of “religious freedom.” As Justice Samuel Alito argued in that case, because acceptance of marriage equality “is directly contrary to the religious principles” of the plaintiffs, mere exposure to notions of acceptance violates their First Amendment rights.
If merely seeing a same-sex couple in a storybook oppresses Christians, then what about the rest of the world? Are Christians persecuted by TV ads that feature gay families? Are they violated by seeing happy queer couples in public? Are they being wronged if they happen to walk by as people outside a venue celebrate a same-sex wedding? Well, yes, that’s what many in the Christian right believe, including at least some of the court’s conservative justices.
In his dissent of the Obergefell ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that marriage equality “threatens the religious liberty our Nation has long sought to protect.” Seven years later, in his concurrence for Dobbs v. Jackson Woman’s Health, the decision that ended abortion rights, Thomas held that the Supreme Court should also “reconsider” past cases that legalized birth control, gay sex and same-sex marriage.
Since the moment the Obergefell decision was handed down, Republicans have toyed with the broader argument that the mere fact of same-sex marriage’s existence inherently oppresses Christians by making them feel bad. Alito spelled this out in his dissent of Obergefell. If same-sex marriage is legalized, he argued, it would become normalized. “I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools,” he warned.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, argued that it’s “religious oppression” of Christians to simply live in states where same-sex couples are getting married. Brian Umphress, a state court judge in Texas, is suing on the grounds that marrying same-sex couples is not just a violation of his religious freedom, but that he’s also experiencing religious oppression because people think that makes him a bigot.
https://www.salon.com/2025/08/13/the-chr...rsecution/
While most people might have forgotten Kim Davis, she hasn’t moved on. She has spent the last decade proclaiming her alleged victimhood to establish her Christian martyr bona fides. When she ran for reelection in her rural Appalachian county in 2018, she lost by 8%. Now she’s asking the Supreme Court to rule that the only way to preserve the religious freedom of anti-gay bigots is to strip marriage rights away from LGBTQ people.
Unfortunately, it’s not as crazy as it seems — especially after this year’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which functionally allowed a minority of hyper-religious parents to ban all books mentioning LGBTQ people from schools on the grounds of “religious freedom.” As Justice Samuel Alito argued in that case, because acceptance of marriage equality “is directly contrary to the religious principles” of the plaintiffs, mere exposure to notions of acceptance violates their First Amendment rights.
If merely seeing a same-sex couple in a storybook oppresses Christians, then what about the rest of the world? Are Christians persecuted by TV ads that feature gay families? Are they violated by seeing happy queer couples in public? Are they being wronged if they happen to walk by as people outside a venue celebrate a same-sex wedding? Well, yes, that’s what many in the Christian right believe, including at least some of the court’s conservative justices.
In his dissent of the Obergefell ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that marriage equality “threatens the religious liberty our Nation has long sought to protect.” Seven years later, in his concurrence for Dobbs v. Jackson Woman’s Health, the decision that ended abortion rights, Thomas held that the Supreme Court should also “reconsider” past cases that legalized birth control, gay sex and same-sex marriage.
Since the moment the Obergefell decision was handed down, Republicans have toyed with the broader argument that the mere fact of same-sex marriage’s existence inherently oppresses Christians by making them feel bad. Alito spelled this out in his dissent of Obergefell. If same-sex marriage is legalized, he argued, it would become normalized. “I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools,” he warned.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, argued that it’s “religious oppression” of Christians to simply live in states where same-sex couples are getting married. Brian Umphress, a state court judge in Texas, is suing on the grounds that marrying same-sex couples is not just a violation of his religious freedom, but that he’s also experiencing religious oppression because people think that makes him a bigot.
https://www.salon.com/2025/08/13/the-chr...rsecution/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
