Discrimination towards the LGBTQ community is rooted in some religious text, and the interpretation of homosexuality and other walks of life has fueled thousands upon thousands of years of hate, persecution and violence. Denying services based on sexual orientation is an extension of that. The ebbs and flows of the majority create a space of legitimate oppression (which the founders even said would happen, so it's not surprising). Christianity is so well-established, that it's been a dominating political force in the United States, which is why it has the footing for a means of oppression. To use religious freedom as a form of exclusion is no different than political belief. There is a tendency for Christian beliefs to be prioritized in the United States nonetheless. This allows that dominant religion more rights while also providing the legal room to impact policy as an act of oppression.
There are some that say the first Amendment doesn't apply locally (states, cities...), as it is federal. I have some bad news for them. The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified three years after the civil war. Many historians and legal scholars believe its adoption was almost as important as the entire Bill of Rights itself. In particular, it's the Fourteenth Amendment's second sentence that they focus upon. It reads:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
As the lawmakers who crafted the language of the Fourteenth Amendment readily admitted, it was intended as a reversal of a, then, 35-year-old ruling of the Supreme Court. The 1833 case, Barron v. Baltimore, is the first case where the Supreme Court confronted the argument that a state or city government violated one of the provisions of the Bill of Rights. In Mr. Barron's case, he alleged that local government failed to compensate him for its destruction of private property in violation of his rights contained in the Fifth Amendment. There, the Court ruled that the first ten "amendments contain no expression indicating an intention to apply them to the State governments. This court cannot so apply them." So, in 1833, the Supreme Court confirmed what the original Framers of the Constitution had intended - that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government and not to any state. But the Civil War had changed the relationship between the federal and the states.
With the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress overruled the Barron decision and instead established that, from that point on, certain portions of the Bill of Rights could be federally enforced against state governments. But the ability of the federal government to enforce certain portions of the Bill of Rights against the states left open the question of which would be enforced, and which would not. In a series of decisions handed down over the next several decades, the Supreme Court slowly made clear its process for answering those questions, particularly how it would determine whether the Sixth Amendment right to counsel was an obligation of state government under the Fourteenth Amendment, or not.
The Incorporation Doctrine is a constitutional doctrine through which the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution (known as the Bill of Rights) are applicable to the states through the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (all but the 3rd, 7th, 9th and 10th amendments have been incorporated). That means that the states have to uphold the bill of rights, and obey them. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." When you make a law solely based on religious ideals, you are establishing religious law, which is establishing religion. A theocracy.
How do you know if the government is establishing religion? In 1971, the Supreme Court decided Lemon v. Kurtzman, which created three tests for determining whether a particular government act or policy unconstitutionally promotes religion. The Lemon test says that in order to be constitutional, a policy must:Â � Have a non-religious purpose;
 � Not end up promoting or favoring any set of religious beliefs; and
 � Not overly involve the government with religion.
Now, there are Christians who are saying they are being "oppressed" and are being "persecuted" because of their religion. That, I assure you, is a lie. Call it a persecution narrative, par a noia or just plain fear-mongering, but such claims are common these days among the Religious Right, even though they're impossible to prove. Such claims reached giant proportions during the Obama presidency, and have subsided only somewhat since the election of President Donald Trump. To the Religious Right, persecution of Christians is either already rampant or about to be. Trump administration officials had welcomed with open arms the persecution narrative. During a "religious freedom summit" hosted by the DOJ, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told attendees, "Let's be frank: A dangerous movement undetected by many is challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom. There can be no doubt, it's no little matter, it must be confronted intellectually and politically and be defeated. This past election gives us a rare opportunity to arrest these trends and to confront them.
"We've gotten to the point where courts have held that morality cannot be a basis for law, where ministers are fearful to affirm holy writ from the pulpit, and where one group can actively target religious groups by labelling them hate groups. This president and Department of Justice are determined to protect and advance our heritage of freedom of religion... The Constitution's protections don't end at the parish parking lot nor can our freedoms be confined to our basements." Such claims are nothing new; in fact, they've always been part of the Religious Right's narrative. During a 2006 Washington, D.C., conference sponsored by the Rev. Rick Scarborough, a Texas pastor who's active in the Religious Right, then-Speaker of the House Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said that American society treats Christianity "like a second-class superstition... Seen from that perspective, of course, there is a war on religion." To the Religious Right, it's a given that there's a "war on Christmas," and, by extension, a larger "war on religion" or "war on Christianity." These groups also tend to define "persecution" so broadly that benign acts, such as expecting the owner of a business to serve everyone equally, can become oppression.
Cries of persecution by Christians may raise money and inspire activism for Religious Right causes, but they die in the face of the facts. In the United States, Christian groups often receive special treatment or exemptions from laws that similarly situated secular groups must follow. The position of Christian groups is often one of privilege. (Ironically, it is minority religions, such as Islam, Hinduism, Paganism and others, that often feel persecution, such as difficulties with zoning, restrictions on travel such as Trump's Muslim ban and other forms of discrimination.) Such claims spur Religious Right activists to mobilize and donate to national organizations. By portraying themselves as a persecuted victims, right-wing evangelicals tap into a psychological vein that allows followers to imagine themselves as latter-day versions of the early Christians who endured persecution in the Roman Empire during the second, third and fourth centuries. The national dialogue over LGBTQ rights is instructive. In 2009, Congress considered legislation that would let the U.S. Justice Department to offer assistance when a crime that results in death or serious injury is committed against any American because of the victim's race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. Religious Right leaders went ballistic and insisted that the bill, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, would penalize speech critical of gay people.
The Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association chimed in, "An offended homosexual could accuse a pastor, Sunday school teacher or broadcaster of causing emotional injury simply by expressing the Biblical view that homosexuality is sinful." The Traditional Values Coalition warned, "This so-called 'hate crimes' bill will be used to lay the legal foundation and framework to investigate, prosecute, and persecute pastors, business owners, Bible teachers, Sunday School teachers, youth pastors - you name it - or anyone else whose actions are based upon and reflect the truth found in the Bible." None of this was true. The bill was designed to give the federal government more power to investigate crimes of violence, such as murder and assault, against LGBTQ people. It specifically contained a provision saying, "Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses of, the First Amendment to the Constitution." The measure, now known as Ma t thew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, became law in October 2009. No religious leaders have ever been prosecuted under it. A far-right legal group called the Thomas More Law Center filed suit against the law but lost in court.
In 2014-15, as it began to look as though the Supreme Court would uphold marriage equality, Religious Right groups again spread lies. Jeffress, who served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, told "The Daily Caller," a conservative web site, "That may mean we experience jail time... but as the scripture says, we ought to obey God rather than man, and that's our choice." Scarborough told a Texas radio station that pastors should "resist all government efforts to require them to accept gay marriage, and they will accept any fine and jail time to protect their religious freedom and the freedom of others." Richard Land, a former Southern Baptist Convention official, raised the same thing. Asked by Newsmax TV if the nation would get to the point where pastors end up behind bars for refusing to preside at marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples, Land replied, "It could." Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee really went around the bend. During a conference call hosted by FRC, he asserted that marriage equality would lead to "the criminalization of Christianity." Thanks to the Supreme Court's 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, marriage equality has been the law of the land for more than five years, and the number of religious leaders who have been imprisoned or punished by the government for resisting it stands at zero.
The notion that we are a Christian nation is a lie. All claims of it are easily disputed. Even the founders of this nation said we are not a Christian nation. But make no mistake, the ones making the claim that it is, want a theocracy. As an example, former Vice President, Mike Pence.
Speaking with a passion many evangelicals would see in their pulpits, Pence advocated in 2002 for changing science textbooks to say evolution is merely one "theory" of many, and said including "intelligent design", a school of thought similar to Christian Creationism, alongside the work of Charles Darwin. "The truth is [evolution] always was a theory," he said. "And now that we've recognized evolution as a theory, I would simply and humbly ask: can we teach it as such? And can was also consider teaching other theories... Like the theory that was believed in by every signer of the Declaration of Independence? The Bible tells us that God created man in his own image, male and female he created them--and I believe that." "Some bright day in the future, through science and perhaps through faith, we will find the truth from whence we come," he concluded.
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