Post
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.
#Obergefell#SameSexMarriage#SupremeCourt#ReligiousFreedom#KimDavis#CivilRights
/5
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.
#Obergefell#SameSexMarriage#SupremeCourt#ReligiousFreedom#KimDavis#CivilRights
/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.
#Obergefell#SameSexMarriage#SupremeCourt#ReligiousFreedom#KimDavis#CivilRights
/4
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.
#Obergefell#SameSexMarriage#SupremeCourt#ReligiousFreedom#KimDavis#CivilRights
/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)
#Obergefell#SameSexMarriage#SupremeCourt#ReligiousFreedom#KimDavis#CivilRights
/6
(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.
#Obergefell#SameSexMarriage#SupremeCourt#ReligiousFreedom#KimDavis#CivilRights
/7
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