America's creeping Christian theocracy

Key points are these:

• The radical right, theocratic Christian nationalist (RRTCN) movement holds religious freedom above all other rights

• The RRTCN movement intends to completely eliminate all vestiges of what little is left of the separation of the state from a hyper-aggressive church that wants to control tax revenues as much as possible

• The RRTCN movement employs ruthless but superb dark free speech tactics; for example, it portrays trivial and minor burdens on religious freedom, e.g., legalizing same-sex marriage and having to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding, as horrendous persecution that prevents innocent people from being religious as they desire

• The RRTCN movement is open about its intent to use the superior rights of religious freedom to discriminate against and oppress non-White people, non-heterosexual people, women and non-Christian religions and people 

• The RRTCN movement already has enormously extended the scope of the religious freedom concept from human beings to legal entities like businesses and corporations, thereby enabling religious business owners and executives to oppress and discriminate against unworthy people in the name of their religious freedom

This article summarizes some of how the radical right Supreme Court is quietly but relentlessly forcing most of those key points to integrate into American society, government and business. MSNBC writes:

While [the Supreme Court] claims to be a nonpartisan, neutral arbiter of the law, its conservative majority was deliberately cultivated to expand religious freedom for conservative Christians at the expense of the rights of those deemed less worthy of protection.

The possible revelation of the Hobby Lobby decision — in which the court held that private corporations can demand religious exemptions from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employer health plans cover contraceptives — is the second Supreme Court leak in the news this year. The other involved an even greater victory for the religious right: the unsolved mystery of who leaked a draft of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning the right to an abortion. Both rulings were penned by Alito.

The Hobby Lobby chain of arts and crafts stores already had been the subject of an intense public relations strategy to portray the contraception coverage requirement as a dire threat to the religious freedom of pious business owners. Even before the litigation, the store was a beloved brand in the Bible Belt and beyond. Its billionaire founder, David Green, was long a respected figure and a major donor in the evangelical world. Even without Schenck’s help, Hobby Lobby had already become a poster child for a burgeoning campaign to convince the court to enlarge religious freedom rights for conservative Christians.

When, in 2012, evangelical and Catholic activists attacked the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, the notion of corporate religious rights was a novel legal theory. But when the court held oral arguments two years later, it was immediately clear that a majority of the court had embraced this theory. What changed? Hobby Lobby became a landmark Supreme Court decision owing to a well-funded network of lawyers and activists, and their shared ideologies with the justices who were selected for their positions on issues most important to conservative religious groups.

Before landing at the Supreme Court, Hobby Lobby won its case in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in an opinion authored by future Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, whose nomination was heralded by advocates for this newly expanded religious freedom. The company was represented by Kyle Duncan, a lawyer with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. That organization’s board members include Leonard Leo, the dark money-backed activist whose list of suggested judicial nominees was adopted by then-President Donald Trump — who nominated Duncan to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In recent decades, activists on the right have successfully eroded church-state separation with increasing speed. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, decided earlier this year, the court sided with a high school football coach demanding to pray with players on the field after games. These lawyers and activists have opened the door for religious business owners to refuse to serve LGBTQ people, such as 2018’s Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the court ruled for a baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. That door could open wider in the upcoming 303 Creative v. Elenis, which concerns a web designer’s claims that a nondiscrimination law violates her free speech rights. Leo has been open about his hostility to Supreme Court precedent legalizing contraception and same-sex marriage. In a concurrence in Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas echoed that hostility, even criticizing the 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas that made anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional.

Hobby Lobby was a key inflection point in an ongoing and largely successful right-wing campaign to undermine the separation of church and state and expand recognized religious rights of conservative Christians who claim that abortion, contraception and LGBTQ rights infringe on their religious freedom. Alito’s dinner with Schenck’s emissaries is a symptom of cozy relationships, but the wider activism that shaped the court is a far more significant threat to the court’s willingness to protect the rights of all Americans. Requiring the justices to adhere to a judicial code of conduct to curb conflicts of interest and appearances of partiality would be a welcome reform. But fixing the undemocratic ailments of the Supreme Court will require much more.

In my opinion, the US is well on its way to becoming a Christofascist theocracy. We are not all that far off of that cherished goal of CN elites. What the rank and file knows or is thinking is hard to tell, but most appear to be oblivious to most or all of what is going on here. Mostly clueless seems an apt label.

The RRTCN movement via a series of Supreme Court decisions has neutered the establishment clause.[1] That had been the main obstacle in fusing the Christian church with the federal government. With that gone, nothing but time stands in the way of the radical Republicans who dominate the Supreme Court from converting America from a democratic country with secular law to a kleptocratic Christian theocracy with Christian Sharia law. 

I see no way to stop this Christofascist anti-democratic, anti-secular movement from destroying America as we know it. The RRTCN movement controls the Supreme Court. The clear intent and sacred dogma is to remake the US mostly into some cruel theocratic beast straight out of some time(s) in the past, maybe the Dark Ages, and/or maybe the 1700s or 1800s.

Q: Unreasonable hyperbole or plausible possibility? 

Footnote: 
1. Wikipedia: 

In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The relevant constitutional text is:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

The Establishment Clause acts as a double security, prohibiting both religious abuse of government and political control of religion.