"Since the moment the Obergefell decision was handed down, Republicans have toyed with the broader argument that the mere fact of same-sex marriage鈥檚 existence inherently oppresses Christians by making them feel bad."
~ Amanda Marcotte
I'm a Christian. And when you are given the fake "right" to "marry," I am being oppressed.
/1
https://www.salon.com/2025/08/13/the-christian-right-claims-marriage-equality-is-persecution/
This is the core of the argument that Republicans want to drive to the Supreme Court, because they know that if the case makes it to the Supreme docket, the right-wing cabal controlling the court will likely side with them.
That cabal is made up entirely of right-wing Catholics (except Gorsuch, raised Catholic but now Episcopalian), many affiliated with the secretive theocratic Catholic cult Opus Dei.
/2
This cabal has shown great sympathy with the argument that "Christians" are being "oppressed" when minority groups receive rights that "Christians" do not want to accept.
Though many of us want to forget this or haven't chosen to learn it in the first place, this all began with huge white evangelical hostility to civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s recognizing basic rights of African Americans.
/3
White evangelical Christians, especially in the South, had long taught that "God" chose to make the races separate, with Black people consigned by God to serve white people.
When the federal government recognized the rights of people of color, there was a huge hullabaloo among white Southern evangelicals, who claimed that their religious freedom (to discriminate) was being violated, trampled on.
/4
@wdlindsy@toad.social
When the federal government began threatening to deny federal funding to church-based schools like Bob Jones University as long as the university refused to abide by civil rights laws, white churches across the South began to organize to "defend" their supposedly violated "religious freedom" to discriminate.
/5
This was the genesis of the Religious Right, with Catholic activists then seizing the opportunity to build on the rage of white segregationist Christians in the South by introducing the issue of abortion, about which evangelicals had never cared, to cement an alliance between white Southern evangelicals (continued in /7)
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(continued from /6)
and the many authoritarian (and, let's face it, racist even when they pretended to be otherwise) Catholics outside the South who were enraged when the federal government recognized reproductive rights for women.
From that history to where we are now with Trump and MAGA is a straight line. These folks have been and are the driving force of the Republican party for years now.
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Eveline Sulman 
thank you!
The entire story is written by Talia Lavin, Wild Faith.
Thank you. It's on my reading list and I appreciate the reminder to read that important book.
