RFRA firestorm commentary: roundup of the best

As promised, herewith some pieces about it all that I highly recommend.

Several at The Federalist.

David Harsanyi candidly points out one of the saddest aspects of it all: Pub cowardice.

few things in this world rattle your run-of-the-mill Republican more than some ginned-up outrage over “discrimination” or “bigotry.” The media’s deliberate distortion of the intention, reach, and history of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—not to mention pressure from corporations like Apple and Walmart—was more than enough to do the trick.

What excuse does Mike Pence have for flubbing a simple question about discrimination on national television last Sunday? What’s his excuse for pledging to “fix” a law that’s already straightforward, innocuous, and ubiquitous? He’s not alone, of course. When Arkansas legislators passed the same bill by a wide margin (what the media calls “controversial”), Gov. Asa Hutchinson threw it back to lawmakers and asked them to rework it to guarantee that the make-believe concerns of his MoveOn.org-mimicking son could be “fixed.”

I hope you’ll excuse me, my faithful friends, but if this is your leadership you are screwed. By claiming that RFRA bills can be “fixed,” Republicans are only corroborating the false impression that these bills allow wanton discrimination against gay patrons. By claiming that you can fix this, you are only pretending that there is a compromise available that would make it OK for Christian business owners to refuse participation in gay weddings. None exists. You will be hounded until you are made to coexist.

Hans Fiene coins a term - "Selma envy" - to  describe the Leftist's craving for excuses to indulge in self-congratulation.

Why do so many young adults paint absurd caricatures of Christians who request government protection of their religious freedoms, arguing their true goal is to ban gay men from sitting at the local lunch counter? Why do they spread falsehoods about legislation, insisting that bills like the one recently signed by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will unleash a Republican-led Jim Crow revival aimed at the LGBT community? Why do so many people, Gen Xers and younger, invent a monster of anti-gay bigotry and keep screaming the monster is real despite a mountain of contrary facts standing before them?

The answer is “social studies.” My generation engages in straw men, misinformation, and lies because, in every year of social studies class, we studied the civil-rights movement not as history, but as hagiography. We didn’t just learn what events happened on American soil, we were encouraged to mimic the segregation-defeating holy ones and merit for ourselves a place alongside them in glory. Combining that admonition with our general aversion to hard work, we concluded that the only thing necessary to be as righteous as the saints who fought racial injustice was to decry an injustice that no one else was. And we became so desperate to find that injustice, we lost our minds in the process.

Once upon a time, my generation learned in first-grade social studies, everyone thought it was good to hate African-Americans. But then a group of saintly figures arose who were better human beings than the rednecks from the South, and they changed the world for the better. This story captivated us, and we wanted to change the world, too.
Once, black Americans weren’t allowed to use the same bathrooms as white Americans, we learned the next year, but the holy warriors of progress came along and saved the day. As just as much as we wanted to rescue damsels in distress, Superman style, we wanted to have our own victims to rescue from the forces of bigotry.

The saintly song of the civil-rights movement grew even more rapturous as we grew old enough for our American history teachers to pop a tape in the VCR and show us the gruesome images of the era. Look, children! Look at this sneering face of Southern hatred! Look at these enemies of progress holding the firehoses! These were not human beings corrupted by their circumstances and giving in to the vilest impulses that lurk in the hearts of all men. No, these were demons, evil embodied in human flesh. Look again, children! Look at the faces of these saints who used non-violent protests to fight for equality and change legislation. These are the faces of the morally superior, the holy ones who marched on Selma, those who were more enlightened, more compassionate, more loving than anyone else who had ever lived because they defended the mistreated and defeated discrimination when no one else would. 

He goes on to say that the subsequent generations being bathed in this hagiography yearned for a Noble Cause of their own.  They shopped around and it took a while to find one with all the right elements, and then, bingo!, they found homosexual "marriage."  It was pretty much cost-free:

It required no moral consistency, no financial sacrifice, no effort. We could sleep with as many people as we wanted, divorce as many people as we wanted, father and then abandon as many children as our hearts desired, and lose no credibility. We could spend our entire adult lives defecating on the institution of marriage and this could not sully our gay marriage halos.

On top of that, these oppressed souls were so gainfully employed that they paid for their own lawyers and lobbyists, so we didn’t need to give them a cent. All we had to do was change our profile pictures on Facebook and beatification was ours. Our prayers were answered. The bright, shiny diamond of righteousness no other generation could claim had been placed into our hands. 

Erick Erickson at Red State makes clear why we must continue to fight, even though the scenario looks dire (and in the process provides a good counterargument to Jonah Goldberg's it's-a-done-deal-and-this-is-just-about-shooting-the-wounded stance).

The move to put “free exercise” on the same footing with “free speech” must be opposed because most major faiths recognize homosexuality as outside normal behavior. The logical outcome of this will eventually be to reduce free speech. People and faiths are going to have to be shut up for homosexuals to have the veneer of normalcy.
But it won’t stop there. Over time, the gay rights movement will move to pushing churches to marry gays because normally people get married in churches. Over time, it will move to push religious schools to abandon standards on sexuality. Over time, it will mean religious institutions lose their tax exempt status. Over time, it will require Bible believing churches be labeled hate groups and orthodox Christianity be forced to the sidelines. Over time, it will mean that the state must intervene and protect children from parents who want to raise them as orthodox Bible believing Christians.
Essentially, replacing the prohibition on religious tests clause of the Constitution will become an enforcement of a secularism clause. People of faith need not apply for jobs, political appointments, or elected office. People of faith will be the new bigots because their God said “go and sin no more” and dared list homosexuality as one of those sins.
Ultimately, over time, two thousand years of Christianity will be forced to be treated as the deviant lifestyle. You will be forced to pick a side. If you remain true to your God, you will be outside the bounds of acceptable conduct. You will be made to care.
If you pick the wrong side, you will be punished. Gay rights activists cannot show you tolerance and cannot treat you equally, because that means you and your faith that suggests homosexuality is a sin would be allowed to remain in the public square. And in the quest for the veneer for normalcy, that cannot stand.
For any who suggest this is hyperbole, a college is having its accreditation threatened because of its religious views on sex and a seventy year old is losing her home and business because she did not want to provide flowers to existing, regular customers for a gay wedding.

Kevin Williamson at NRO demonstrates that this is all about the state insisting on occupying the inside of your noggin:

Gay couples contemplating nuptials are not just happening into cake shops and florists with Christian proprietors — this is an organized campaign to bring the private mind under political discipline, to render certain moral dispositions untenable. Like Antiochus and the Jews, the game here is to “oblige them to partake of the sacrifices” and “adopt the customs” of the rulers. We are not so far removed in time as we imagine: Among the acts intended to Hellenize the Jews was a ban on circumcision, a proposal that is still very much alive in our own time, with authorities in several European countries currently pressing for that prohibition.

That's enough for now.  You're a busy person, and so am I.  But if you read the above pieces in their entirety, you, too, will doubtless deem them indispensable.