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Let’s say it all together now: Christian bigot Kim Davis is back in the news.

That’s because the former Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who defied the law in 2015 when she refused to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples, and who already had to pay $100,000 to one of the couples whose civil rights she blocked, and who was forced to pay that couple’s lawyers over $260,000 in legal fees, is apparently trying to hide from the courts how much money she has so that they can’t take it from her.

For those of you who are lucky enough to forget she exists, let me remind you of Kim Davis’ inherent hypocrisy: opposing same-sex marriage while engaging in all kinds of straight shenanigans of her own.

This is a woman who, in chronological order, married Husband 1, had twins with Husband 3, divorced Husband 1, married Husband 2, divorced Husband 2, married Husband 3, divorced husband 3, and then remarried Husband 2.

(Just like Jesus wanted.)

How did she justify her personal life with the whole “sanctity of marriage” thing? Simple. “God still wasn’t in the picture” until Husband 2’s mother died, she wrote in her book, and they went back to church in 2011. So she wasn’t a hypocrite, everyone; she just wasn’t a Christian yet.

In fact, in that book, she chalked up the whole hypocrisy charge to “divine irony.” God took a woman married four times and used her to defend marriage against the gays. Isn’t that so mysterious of Him?!

But her legal history is what matters here. In 2022, a federal judge ruled that Davis broke the law when she refused to sign a legal marriage license for a gay couple on account of her bigoted Christian beliefs. She was a government worker and her personal beliefs, the judge said, couldn’t override the law she had sworn to uphold. When a jury heard the case in 2023 to assess damages, they didn’t buy any of the arguments offered by her attorneys at Liberty Counsel, a Christian hate group, so they eventually ruled that Davis owed David Ermold and David Moore $50,000 each. Liberty Counsel argued that Davis had qualified immunity and couldn’t be sued. The jury, on the other hand, was persuaded by the principle of fuck around and find out.

At the time, Liberty Counsel said they would appeal the decision… and, of course, that went nowhere because Kim Davis clearly broke the law. When it came to the legal fees she owed, the couple asked for “$246,026.40 in attorneys’ fees and $14,058.30 in expenses.” Davis’ team tried to whittle that down to a little over $100,000, but the judge didn’t buy any of the Davis team’s arguments. (Even if you don’t follow legal cases, his decision was a pleasure to read.)

Liberty Counsel kept appealing, all the way up to the Supreme Court, and they kept losing, which I’m sure they didn’t care about because she was great for fundraising. In any case, the additional litigation led a district court to award the couple’s side another $201,592.60 in attorneys’ fees.

If you do the math, that means Davis owes Ermold/Moore and their lawyers $565,285.91.

But she hasn’t currently paid out a single dime. Why not? Because she says she’s broke.

According to a new lawsuit from the lawyers of Ermold and Moore, however, that’s a lie. Davis, they say, inherited quite a bit of money and land when her mother died—her share was worth over $400,000—but she immediately transferred her half of the property to other members of her family so that the courts couldn’t take it away from her.

… Kim Davis and her brother Darold Rayburn Bailey Jr. transferred a Morehead home in their mother’s estate to Bailey Jr., his wife, and Kim Davis’ husband Joe Davis, effectively writing her off of the deed, according to court records. Then, in May 2025, Kim Davis and her brother transferred a 50-acre farm parcel and a separate three-bedroom home to a trust for which her husband and son are beneficiaries. The transfers were made for “the love and affection which the parties have for each other ... and for no monetary consideration whatsoever,” but their fair cash value would have exceeded $400,000, half of which belonged to Davis, the attorneys say.

What makes that so damning is that, in late 2025, she had to answer, under oath, a question about whether she had transferred any property worth more than $2,000 over the previous five years. She said no.

“That turned out to be a false statement because we have copies of the deeds by which she conveyed these properties just eight or nine months earlier,” [Attorney Michael] Gartland said.

Gartland said the couple supports the lawsuit and he expects the court to reverse Davis’ transfers.

“This is a slam dunk as far as I’m concerned,” Gartland said. “These transfers will get undone and it will be as if her brother and her own them again... we will have a lien on these three properties and we will move to settle to get our clients paid.”

Gartland is specifically asking the court to nullify those transfers and use the inherited money to pay off her judgment.

Given all this damning evidence, how does Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver defend what Davis did? He says she totally told the truth under oath last year…

“She did not lie,” Staver said. “They asked a specific question, and she answered it exactly, truthfully the way they had asked it.”

The attorneys asked Davis to “identify each property you own, or in which you have an interest,” not the past-tense “owned,” according to a transcript of the December post-judgment discovery documents. The attorneys also used the present-tense when they asked about which trusts she is a beneficiary.

Good luck with that defense. It seems like she was deliberately lying about what she had done. Kentucky has a law called the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act that says, among other things, property transfers can be voided if you were trying to hide it to avoid paying off a debt you owe. There appears to be evidence that Davis hid her inheritance from the couple she owed money to, and that she transferred the land for “no monetary consideration,” further shielding how much she was actually worth.

Interesting side note: Liberty Counsel says that, while they represented Davis in the past, they’re not working for her anymore.

The funny thing is that Davis always had a simple option available to her: If she didn’t want to sign same-sex marriage licenses after Obergefell, she could have resigned. She would have still been a “martyr” for conservative Christians everywhere! Instead, she insisted on staying in her job while breaking the law. She has since become a laughingstock for the nation—a symbol of Christian hubris, selfishness, and hate.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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Evangelist Alvin Christian is the man behind God’s Store House Food Bank in Bluefield, West Virginia, a city located in the southernmost part of the state. Since 2023, the pastor has helped feed up to 800 families a day.

If you’ve ever worked at a food pantry, you know donations can come from individuals, larger food banks, or local businesses with excess product they can’t sell anymore. As recently as last week, Christian was letting supporters know everything he had in store for them.

But he recently filmed a video showing viewers that his freezers were completely empty. There was no food coming in, and therefore no food going out.

In the now-deleted reel, Christian explained that there were outlets trying to give him the resources he needed… he just refused to take them. Because, after doing his own research, he found out those groups worked with or supported LGBTQ people.

A copy of the video was preserved by Facebook user nes.quick.737, who said the pastor “would rather let his people STARVE than to accept food for the pantry from the LGBTQ community.”

Good morning, folks. This is Pastor Alvin over here at God’s Store House Food Bank. I know I’ve had a lot of messages and a lot of concerns and wondering when and why we haven’t given out food.

As you can see, our cupboards are empty, our freezers are empty. We have nothing in the warehouse as far as food-wise at this moment.

But to let you know, the reason why we’re in this position is because I’d done some research. I made the phone calls. I talked to the proper people, and I asked a question: Are y’all tied in or partners with LGBQT-whatever movement? And they said yes.

I done some more research and found out that they are part of the gay rights movement.

Well, as a man of God, and standing in faith with God, I refuse to receive food from anybody that has anything that is tied into that. Now… hear this, I will not—will not!—turn anybody away. I will not discriminate against anybody. I will be honest. I would love you the same. I will pray for you. I will give you food if we got it.

But I want you to know that I am, first of all, a man of God, and I serve Jesus, and I serve him faithfully. I’m not perfect, but I’m faithful to God. And that’s why we haven’t got food here, folks, is because of that. I refuse to be tied in to something of that nature that’s totally abomination against God.

And so that’s why I have searched and have been searching and still searching hours, different hours, at night, days, trying to find food to bring here that I don’t have to be tied in with that stuff.

So, um, I don’t understand why a lot of you preachers do what you’re doing, but that’s between you and God. But I’m gonna stand up for righteousness no matter what it costs. If it costs me my life, then I know where I’m going. It just don’t matter because my life don’t belong to me, it belongs to Jesus. And when you realize that you were paid with the price, and you don’t belong to yourself when you become one of His own, and then you begin to walk in the uprightness of God, you have to make a stand somewhere.

And I make a stand right here, right now, that, uh, that’s why we haven’t had no food here in a while, is because I will not be a part of a “gay rights” movement because the Feed America [sic] is partnered up with them, and I will not be a part of that. So, y’all keep us in your prayers. Pray that God will open another door because the food belongs to him anyway, that he can continue to hopefully start shipping us food here soon. So always remember, all you need is faith in God. Continue to pray. Pray for God’s Store House Food Bank that God will open that door…

So if I have this correct, he has no food to give away… because the people who want to offer him food to feed the hungry are also the ones who love LGBTQ people. (That implies other Christian bigots don’t want to help out at all.)

He’ll gladly give away food to anybody, he promises. But he won’t accept food donations from individuals or groups that ally with gay people.

Why not? What does he think will happen if a bunch of canned goods come from a local LGBTQ pride group? Is that how the cyclosporiasis outbreak began?! Why would it matter if a donated box of cereal came from a lesbian mother or a Christian father who’s a sinner in plenty of other ways?

Feeding America, by the way, is the nation’s largest hunger-relief charity and has topped the Forbes list of Top Charities for four consecutive years. They’ll work with—and accept donations from—pretty much anybody. To reject their services because some of those partners may include LGBTQ-affiliated groups is ridiculous.

What’s really messed up about this is that Pastor Christian is doing an otherwise thankless job that should be praised! But in this case, he’s choosing selfishness over generosity. He’d rather let people go hungry than work with groups that spread Gay Cooties. (He did not respond to a request for comment.)

There’s a famous parable you may have heard about a man facing life-threatening flooding who climbs to the top of a roof, hoping to be saved before it’s too late. As the story goes, a canoe, a motorboat, and a helicopter all come by to rescue him… and he refuses their help, saying “The Lord will protect me.” Then he drowns. When he gets to Heaven, he asks why God didn’t help him. God says he sent two boats and a helicopter—what more could he have done?!

That’s what this sounds like. Alvin Christian needed food to help feed the hungry and the offers came pouring in! But because of his own faith-based vanity, he said no to those offers for the dumbest of reasons.

When one critic called him up to complain about it, saying this was not the message of Jesus and that they were praying for God to have mercy on Pastor Alvin’s “cancerous soul and the lives that you have negatively affected,” Alvin Christian had a simple response: “You must be gay. You must be gay. That’s just what I feel that you are.”

So this is how he conducts research, apparently. He just uses his own Gaydar. If it seems gay, it must be gay, and that’s why people should go hungry.

The irony in all this is that if you look up Alvin Christian’s personal history, there’s no shortage of sins he’s committed. But only one ever seems to matter to religious zealots these days.

That is the hypocrisy at the heart of his whole stand. Christian insists he would never discriminate against LGBTQ people himself, but he’s rejecting perfectly good food because someone involved in providing it might support LGBTQ rights. And when his freezers are empty, his promise to not “turn anybody away” from receiving food is meaningless. He doesn’t have to turn LGBTQ people away because his bigotry has already ensured there’s nothing to give anyone.

There’s nothing courageous about this “sacrifice.” The only people paying the price for his arrogance are the people who have to go hungry so Alvin Christian can cosplay as a martyr.

A food pantry should exist to feed people, period, not to serve as a religious purity test. Canned goods aren’t contaminated just because the donor attended Pride. Cereal doesn’t have a position on transgender people playing sports.

But Alvin Christian would rather have empty freezers than long lines.

By the way, Christian announced earlier this year he wanted to move his food bank to a larger warehouse worth about $650,000. His GoFundMe hasn’t received a single penny yet. Maybe the problem is all the potential donors are LGBTQ-friendly, too, and he’s rejecting every donation.

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Another attempt to force the Trump administration to follow the law has been rejected by (you guessed it) a Trump-nominated judge, handing another undeserved win to Christian Nationalists.

This time, it involved a lawsuit arguing that Trump’s “Religious Liberty Commission,” which was required by law to be religiously diverse, had virtually no religious diversity on it.

When Trump formed the group in May of 2025, the executive order said that the group was formed to “offer diverse perspectives on how the Federal Government can defend religious liberty for all Americans” and they really only had two jobs:

The Commission shall produce a comprehensive report on the foundations of religious liberty in America, the impact of religious liberty on American society, current threats to domestic religious liberty, strategies to preserve and enhance religious liberty protections for future generations, and programs to increase awareness of and celebrate America’s peaceful religious pluralism…

…

The Commission shall advise the White House Faith Office and the Domestic Policy Council on religious liberty policies of the United States…

Was it all symbolic? Sure. But it could have been useful if experts on the subject were coming together to offer the administration a guide on how to overcome serious obstacles to religious liberty.

More importantly, the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) of 1972—passed to counter corruption—said that any commission like this one had to be transparent, balanced in terms of ideological makeup, and structured to avoid inappropriate influence by special interests.

But according to the lawsuit filed in February by a coalition of religious organizations, the Religious Liberty Commission violated FACA many times over.

That was the main allegation from the Interfaith Alliance, Muslims For Progressive Values, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Hindus For Human Rights, all represented by lawyers working with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

For example, when it comes to ideological balance, the commission consisted of 13 conservative Christians—including former beauty pageant contestant Carrie Prejean Boller, evangelist Franklin Graham, Dr. Phil (for some reason), and evangelical conspiracy theorist Eric Metaxas—and a token orthodox Jew.

The Commission’s membership is far from fairly balanced because it does not represent religious communities aside from Christianity and Judaism. In remarks made to the Commission, Defendant Trump has articulated a commitment to protect what he describes as “the Judeo-Christian principles of our founding.”16 The Commission’s imbalanced membership reflects a narrow conception of which religious principles, and whose rights, are worth protecting…

…

Of the Commission’s members, none are members of a religion that does not fit within Defendant Trump’s “Judeo-Christian” framework. For example, the Commission includes no adherents or representatives of Islam, Hinduism, or Sikhism, several of the most common religions in the United States behind Christianity and Judaism.

Those members, the lawsuit said, were also not ideologically different. They’re all basically Christian Nationalists who support “maximal protection for the exercise of Judeo-Christian religious beliefs without consideration for the rights and beliefs of others” and who oppose the principle of church/state separation.

One way to counter this argument would have been to show that various perspectives had been considered at the commission’s meetings. But the meetings were held at the right-wing Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. and all they ever seemed to talk about was how amazing Christianity is.

During the first meeting, the Commission focused on the historical tradition of Christianity in the United States. Members of the Commission discussed how Christian faith shaped the nation’s understanding of “freedom, law and human dignity” and quoted a statement that the nation should “prefer Christians for [our] rulers.”

The Commission opened the September 8 meeting with a Christian prayer and closed the September 29 hearing with a specifically Christian prayer “in Jesus’ name.”

The lawsuit said the group hadn’t been transparent either. Sure, they’ve posted their meetings on YouTube, but that’s about it.

FACA requires Defendants to make available, in advance of the public meetings where their content will be relevant, “the records, reports, transcripts, minutes, appendixes, working papers, drafts, studies, agenda, [and] other documents . . . made available to or prepared for or by” the Commission...

Defendants did not provide advance notice of witness lists or other documents made available to the Commission in advance of these meetings.

Defendants did not provide agendas for the meetings in advance.

Defendants have also not produced complete transcripts for the September 8, September 29, or December 10, 2025 meetings. Defendants also appear to have edited the videos for at least one meeting and posted incomplete video on their website.

None of the witness statements made to the Commission have been made publicly available in written form.

Detailed meeting minutes for the meetings have not been made publicly available.

The Plaintiffs said all of this made their own work harder because they couldn’t “divert resources” to push back against what’s being done when they didn’t know what was being done. And given the opaqueness of the group, it seemed likely that the eventual report this commission would release would ”inflict further harm on Plaintiffs.” (Turns out they were right!)

The lawsuit specifically asked the court for a few things. They wanted the judge to declare that the commission had violated FACA, force the commission “to employ good faith efforts” to balance their ideological makeup, include a disclaimer on any report that it was produced in violation of the law, and make them release the information they were required to produce but had refused to up to this point.

“Religious freedom for some is religious freedom for none,” said Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance. “The government has no right to pick and choose which religious beliefs to promote, and which to marginalize. The Trump administration has failed to uphold our country’s proud religious freedom tradition, and we will hold them accountable. Today’s lawsuit is our recommitment to fight for religious liberty for all with every tool available to us.”

…

“The Religious Liberty Commission isn’t about protecting religious liberty for all; it’s about rejecting our nation’s religious diversity and prioritizing one narrow set of conservative ‘Judeo-Christian’ beliefs,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United. “The commission’s public meetings – most of which have been held at the Museum of the Bible and have been dominated by a very specific brand of Christian faith, Christian prayers, and predominantly Christian speakers – are a vivid example of this favoritism. The commission’s true purpose and operations can’t be squared with America’s constitutional promise of church-state separation.”

And now, unfortunately, a judge has rejected that request.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge John P. Cronan—a Trump nominee—tossed out the case by basically redefining the meaning of diversity.

Judge John P. Cronan said that although a federal law requires that advisory commissions have a balance of viewpoints, it didn’t specify how this should be done. The New York judge said Trump has wide discretion in picking members.

….

He also wrote that the commission is diverse in other ways, such as including both clergy and lay people. And he said the commission has “adherents of at least five different religions” — by citing the one Jewish member and then members of various Christian denominations and identities.

That’s not diversity… That’s the Republican Caucus. That’s like saying the Supreme Court’s conservative super-majority can’t be racist because Clarence Thomas is on it. Just because you have a lay person or a Jewish person or different shades of Christians doesn’t mean you have any intellectual diversity in the bunch. Those people were selected for the committee because everyone knew what they would push for in the final report.

And while some of the missing transcripts, minutes, and testimonies were eventually posted, they came far too late to be useful to critics.

The coalition released a brief joint statement about the results, focusing on the positive:

“Even before this decision, our litigation helped uncover the information the Trump-Vance administration attempted to hide from the public about this biased and unlawful body. Religious liberty and pluralism are foundational American values, and we remain committed to fighting for a democracy that does not promote a single religious belief and ignores others. We are grateful that this case achieved a major goal by forcing greater transparency, and we will continue our work.”

I don’t blame them for taking what they can get. It doesn’t sound like they plan to appeal.

That said, it’s really incredible how badly the Trump administration botched this. They could easily have put together a diverse group to advise the president—allowing people to think they respect religious diversity—then just ignore their recommendations entirely. But this administration isn’t even politically strategic like that. They invited their friends to the club and ignored even the bare minimum list of things they legally need to do, as if to show how no one can stop them from breaking the law. If you’re a conservative Christian, they let you do it.

This wasn’t just some technical failure of process on the Trump administration’s part. It was a moral and constitutional failure by Chair Dan Patrick and everyone else involved in this sham commission. The goal was never to protect religious freedom but to promote one specific brand of religion. Their final report was predictable from Day One.

By stacking the commission with conservative Christians and one ideologically aligned Orthodox Jew, the administration took a mandate for pluralism and turned it into a vehicle for exclusion. The imbalance wasn’t an accident. It was created by design. By effectively shunning non-Christians and even progressive Christians from the group, they could pretend that the government’s position matches their own.

But a Trump judge saw those facts and decided to redefine what “diversity” means in a way that allowed a bunch of clones to pretend they pass the test.

The bottom line is that whoever has access to power apparently gets to redefine religious liberty however they want to advance their beliefs while screwing over everyone else’s. But if religious freedom doesn’t belong to everyone, it belongs to no one.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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What is it about being in an enclosed space, surrounded by people who can’t escape, that makes evangelical Christians even more insufferable than usual?

There’s now, apparently, an epidemic of Christians who get on planes and begin preaching when they know they finally have a captive audience. Evangelist Whitney Lynn, one of the more notorious culprits of this, even said as much in a recent TikTok post: “I just love a captive audience.”

@whitneylynn123I just love a captive audience. 😄 About 200 people on that plane got to hear the Gospel! I didn’t get many hecklers on the flight, but I sure did once I started preaching in the airport. It doesn’t bother me at all. That kind of boldness and thick skin only comes from Jesus. I have the truth, the power of God, and time is running out. Jesus is coming back, and people need to hear the Gospel again and again. Many of them will never step foot in a church—you might be the only messenger God sends. Let’s be bold in these last days. 🙏🔥 Whitneylynn.org | Igniteyourlightkidz.com | Spotify #Jesus #Jesuschrist #airplane #sandiego #gospel

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But she’s hardly alone, according to travel reporter Hannah Sampson of the Washington Post:

There have been viral guitar-led worship services in the air, hours-long prayer and song sessions, and quick messages during a flight delay. Where some people see admirable boldness, many recoil at the thought of an unwanted sermon.

“That would be my nightmare,” someone wrote in response to an “open air airplane preaching” video posted on TikTok in June. “Can’t even walk away.”

“The way I would open that emergency exit,” another person wrote. Someone else weighed in: “This is why I drive.”

The fact that the sermons are unwanted doesn’t bother the evangelists at all because, for once, they have an audience that can’t walk away. And the hope that strangers might convert outweighs any concern that they’ll conclude Christians are lunatics.

There’s unfortunately very little airline staff can do to stop this. While there are rules regarding passengers who are disobedient or belligerent, preaching doesn’t necessarily cross a line. Flight attendants can politely ask them to stop, but I have yet to see any examples of plane preachers getting kicked off flights because they wouldn’t shut up.

Which means we’re just stuck with the possibility Christians may hijack a flight with their voices.

Can you even imagine sitting in a middle seat, on a delayed plane, near someone who wants to be the flight’s Main Character? You thought crying babies on a plane were annoying? They can’t control themselves. This grown-ass woman decided the one thing everyone needed to hear on a plane was her annoying voice preaching a message most people wouldn’t want to hear off the plane.

Just as if someone does this on a subway, most passengers seem to respond with eye-rolls and silence. Just another crazy passenger. But silence isn’t the same as consent. You have to feel for the people who hoped to take a nap, do some work, or just enjoy the brief respite from the annoying Christians who exist in all the other realms of their lives.

There are ways to push back, though.

While flight attendants may be hesitant to tell an evangelist to be quiet, it’s a lot easier to do it when other passengers make that specific request. They can say the preaching is disturbing, document it on their phones, and complain to the airline later—at some point, the bad publicity for the airline could pressure them to set ground rules about what sort of outbursts are acceptable. They can also, as one Reddit user suggested, blast popular music over the preaching so that the evangelist can’t post this sermon online without running afoul of copyright issues.

Or they can remind the evangelist of Matthew 6:5.

Other Christians have an especially important role here, too. If they believe faith shouldn’t be imposed like this, they should be the loudest people condemning this behavior—in real time if they’re fellow passengers and later if they hear about it.

All of this reeks of Christian privilege. These kinds of stunts would never be tolerated—even for a moment—if the evangelists weren’t Christian.

It’s telling that these Christians believe a captive audience is the best way to spread their message. They’re basically admitting other people wouldn’t listen to them otherwise. The only thing they accomplish with their impromptu sermons is reminding people why they should avoid Christians when they have the option.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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On Thursday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced updates for how the Department of Justice would tackle matters involving “religious liberty.” These were guidelines they’d use when deciding which cases to pursue. The last time the list had been updated was 2017—under Donald Trump’s former Attorney General Jeff Sessions—and Blanche insisted it needed to be revisited in “light of significant U.S. Supreme Court decisions issued over the past nine years.”

Rather than state bluntly that the government must remain neutral on matters of faith and defend separation of church and state, the updated list shows how this administration plans to allow Christians to receive accommodations, exemptions, and tax dollars—even when those desires clash with someone else’s civil rights and religious freedom.

First, let’s go back to 2017. The 25-page memo that Sessions promoted made news for saying that religious groups and businesses had the same freedom as religious people (in other words, they could discriminate and refuse to adhere to various laws that violated their beliefs). None of that could be held against them if they wanted federal contracts from the government. The same was true of grant money; if a state handed out dollars to repave playgrounds, private religious schools were eligible to receive that money.

We’ve lived under those rules for the past decade or so, so they’ve basically been normalized. But let’s not pretend there was anything normal about that guidance, as Courthouse News pointed out at the time:

The guidelines touch on a number of high-profile religious liberty disputes, including the Hobby Lobby case that challenged the requirement that employers provide health insurance coverage that includes contraception. It also says the government cannot enforce the so-called Johnson Amendment, which threatens to strip tax-exempt status from religious groups that engaged in political advocacy.

…

… Under the new policy, a claim of a violation of religious freedom would be enough to override many anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people, women and others.

“This is putting the world on notice: You better take these claims seriously,” said Robin Fretwell Wilson, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “This is a signal to the rest of these agencies to rethink the protections they have put in place on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Somehow, Blanche looked at those rules and said the problem with them was that they didn’t go far enough. So wherever he could go further, he did.

The 2017 memo said the Establishment Clause was in effect and that the government was prohibited from “officially favoring or disfavoring particular religious groups.”

The 2026 memo says the Establishment Clause must be interpreted in reference to “historical practices and understandings.” Which is coded language that benefits Christianity since other religions weren’t as pervasive in the early years of our country. It also says the government doesn’t have to “purge from public life” anything that critics (i.e. atheists) claim endorses religion… like a giant cross on public property or a public school football coach wanting to pray at midfield after a game.

The 2017 memo protected federal employees’ religious expression (as long as it didn’t cross into harassment or workplace disruption).

The 2026 memo gives far more leeway to annoying religious employees, saying they can’t be punished if what they’re doing is part of their faith. It also allows federal employees to participate in religious activities—like a Pete Hegseth-led military prayer gathering—as long as no one’s forced to join. Even if those activities are arguably coercive in nature with people pressured to join in.

The 2017 memo said religious groups were eligible for public funding, assuming the money wasn’t being used to proselytize or for religious worship.

The 2026 memo gets rid of those safeguards entirely, saying religious groups can’t be excluded from public funding because of their beliefs. While it doesn’t directly authorize federal funding of worship, it gets rid of the caveats from 2017.

While the 2017 memo didn’t say much about parental rights, the 2026 memo says the government can’t interfere with a parents’ desire to raise kids with their religious beliefs. That means if public schools teach anything (e.g. sex education, books with LGBTQ characters, non-whitewashed American history) that goes against a parent’s faith, that parent can have their kid pulled from class without any consequences.

The 2017 memo required employers to provide reasonable accommodations for someone’s religious beliefs unless it created an “undue hardship” (a purposely vague term).

The 2026 memo defines that hardship as “substantial increased costs in the overall context of the business.” This makes it a lot harder to deny requests for religious accommodations.

The 2017 memo required federal agencies to respect the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 but implied that individual employees couldn’t be sued for any purported violations of that law.

The 2026 memo says agency officials “may be sued in their individual capacities if they violate RFRA” and may have to pay any associated fines. This creates a massive incentive for officials to approve any religious requests, no matter how ridiculous, than risk a personal lawsuit.

Overall, the updated memo doesn’t really focus on protecting people from the harms of religion. It’s all about giving religious zealots leeway to go even further with their desires; as long as they can claim what they’re doing is an extension of their faith, the government is generally on their side. Even if that means discriminating against people or pressuring them to join your faith.

Donald Trump appointed right-wing Supreme Court justices to rewrite the rules regarding church/state separation, and the Justice Department is now using their decisions to rewrite how they’ll uphold the law.

For those reasons, the Freedom From Religion Foundation condemned the 2026 memo:

“This so-called religious liberty guidance is really a roadmap for privileging conservative Christianity at the expense of the constitutional rights of everyone else,” says FFRF Legal Director Patrick Elliott. “Rather than reminding federal agencies that the First Amendment protects both the free exercise of religion and the prohibition against government establishment of religion, the Justice Department has produced a one-sided manifesto that treats religious belief as a trump card over neutral laws, civil rights protections and government accountability.”

…

“The Department of Justice should be defending the First Amendment in its entirety, not transforming it into a tool for advancing Christian nationalist priorities,” [FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie] Gaylor adds. “True religious freedom flourishes only when the government remains neutral on matters of religion.”

This memo tells the Justice Department they can weaponize conservative Christianity in order to use it against LGBTQ people, women, religious minorities, atheists, etc. An agency that’s supposed to defend the constitutional rights of all Americans is now manufacturing legal arguments for Christian privilege. It acts like damn near every conservative Christian grievance is a potential civil rights emergency.

If and when we ever get a different administration, this memo needs to be rescinded immediately—not that the 2017 guidance was any better. We need a Justice Department that affirms religious freedom for everyone, understanding the sensible limits to that in a pluralistic society. That also means appointing judges who understand that church-state separation protects religious freedom rather than threatens it.

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There’s at least one silver lining to Donald Trump being president: A hell of a lot of young people say they’re less likely to go to church because of his ties to Christianity.

That’s according to an unpublished study from the Billy Graham Center Research Institute, based out of (evangelical) Wheaton College, and cited by the Christian Post:

The Billy Graham Center Research Institute surveyed 2,365 Gen Z adults, ages 18-28, through NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel between Aug. 9 and Sept. 26, 2024. The study was funded by the Lilly Endowment.

According to the research, 48% of respondents said they agree with the statement “Christians’ support of Trump has made me less likely to go to church.”

That included 19% who “strongly agreed,” 14% who “agreed” and 15% who “slightly agreed.” By contrast, 52% disagreed, including 21% who “strongly disagreed,” 16% who “disagreed” and 15% who “slightly disagreed.”

Rick Richardson, professor of evangelism and leadership at Wheaton College and the study’s lead researcher, told The Christian Post on Tuesday that the research is yet unpublished and being adapted into a book.

It’s hard to say a lot about this study without knowing more about how it was conducted or what the nature of this book is going to be, though it’s important to note it was done before the 2024 election and Trump has only gotten more extreme and more corrupt since then—largely due to the Christian Nationalist sycophants who seem to defend his actions at every turn. If that many young people were turned off by him in 2024, you have to imagine the numbers are even worse today given his war of choice in Iran, his careless destruction of our economy, his suppression of the Epstein files, DOGE, the explosive diarrhea, etc.

But let’s assume these results are accurate. It would confirm what critics have been saying for years now, which is that white evangelical leaders chose short-term political gain over long-term religious success. They have prayed with Trump in the Oval Office, argued that certain victories (like the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade) are worth everything else, and convinced roughly 80% of white evangelicals to vote for Trump in each of the last three presidential elections.

The relationship between Trump and conservative Christians has always been transactional. Trump gave them whatever they wanted—credibility they never earned, federal judges who prioritized right-wing religious beliefs over a plain reading of the law, access to political power, etc.—and they gave him their votes. No scandals dissuaded them. No wars bothered them. No attempt to overthrow our democracy gave them pause. No amount of sinning in real time made them budge. They’re just as immoral as he is. It was a match made in Hell.

They’ve had countless opportunities to distance themselves from him and it would have been easy for them to justify it—with the Epstein files, the appointments of ignorant zealots to positions of power, the brazen ways he’s enriched himself at the expense of the country. They never did. They always argued that Democrats were the real enemy even as the argument became harder and harder to justify to a conservative base.

Not only were they silent in the face of moral disaster, they openly advocated for him even when they didn’t have to, insisting that Trump was one of their own. The now-dead abuse advocate James Dobson said in June of 2016 that Trump had become “born again,” adding that he personally knew the person who “led him to Christ.” Pastor Mark Burns (who famously lied about his own credentials) said in 2024 he’s “personally heard [Trump] profess his faith in the Lord Jesus.” Evangelical huckster Hank Kunneman claimed Trump was anointed by God. Souther Baptist preacher Robert Jeffress agreed Trump was “born again” and a Christ follower.

And those are just the preachers around him. Trump himself has said he identifies as a Christian, a move that allowed him to sell an overpriced cheaply made Bible plastered with his name:

Don’t forget when he held up a Bible in front of a church after his team used tear gas to drive away peaceful protesters:

To a large extent, his Christian cosplaying has worked. In 2023, Republican voters said Donald Trump was more religious than Mitt Romney and Joe Biden. They just overlooked the fact that Trump was a thrice-married racist who paid hush money to porn stars he was having affairs with when his current wife was pregnant with his fifth child. That he was the Two Corinthians guy. That he said he doesn’t need forgiveness. That he couldn’t even name his favorite Bible verse.

When you look at all of this holistically, Trump has hijacked evangelical Christianity the same way he hijacked the Republican Party. He took an already broken and extremely dysfunctional group of people bounded together by who they hate and brought them all together under his umbrella. You can’t separate Trump from the GOP any more than you can separate Trump from conservative Christianity.

I think there’s an argument to be made that if you ask young people if they want to go to church—especially a white evangelical, non-denominational megachurch—it’s like you’re asking them if they support Trump. Because that’s what church is now. It’s not about Jesus. It’s not about the Sermon on the Mount. It’s about culture wars and right-wing politics.

That’s the Faustian bargain that Christian leaders made when they sold their souls to prevent Hillary Clinton from getting into the White House. (To be fair, they lost their credibility long before then, but if there were any shreds of it left, they’re gone now.)

People under 30 have been watching all this play out their entire adult lives, so it doesn’t surprise me that nearly half of them now say Trump has dissuaded them from going to church. Most church leaders—certainly white evangelical and Southern Baptist ones—have never done enough to condemn this administration. In some cases, they avoided doing so because they didn’t want to alienate their already shrinking congregations.

If pastors can’t speak out against the moral atrocities of this administration when it’s this damn obvious, why would anyone trust their judgment on spiritual matters? If people went to church because they thought it would provide a moral backbone to their lives, the Trump administration has blown that argument right out of the water.

Even as Trump makes life harder for immigrants through his (mis)use of ICE, and even as National Association of Evangelicals President Walter Kim stressed that the administration’s deportation policies were literally harming churches, many Christian leaders with large platforms have either remained by Trump’s side or said nothing of value.

If you want to look for moral clarity these days, you’ll have a far easier time looking to the Muslim mayor of New York City than a Southern Baptist preacher in Texas.

Even if we can’t see the underlying research that says many young people are turned off of church because of Trump, we already know that that the push toward theocracy generates backlash wherever it happens, whenever it happens.

Christian Nationalists believed they could use their power to codify their beliefs into law. They never stopped to think about whether those policies were any good or whether Americans—including young people who might have been Christian leaders in the future—might be turned off by their willingness to cede moral authority to the least moral person to ever occupy the White House.

This isn’t going to end well for them. But instead of admitting they went down the wrong path, you can bet good money that Christian leaders will just double down on their support of Trump and his allies in the future. At this point, even they don’t care about the long-term success of their religion. They just want to cling to whatever power they can.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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There are 153,834 people in the U.S. federal prison system as of May 30, 2026 and exactly 101 of them identify as atheists. Those self-described atheists make up a mere 0.066% of the federal prison population.

That’s according to a Freedom of Information Act request I filed with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

I’ve made similar requests in the past and the numbers have been roughly the same each time, though this year’s numbers are the lowest I’ve ever seen. That suggests this proportion isn’t changing even as the percentage of non-religious Americans in the general population has (mostly) increased over the past two decades. (Self-identified atheists now represent about 5% of the population. “Nones” are about 29%.)

More to the point, it means the presence of atheists in U.S. federal prisons is significantly lower than what we find in the general population.

For the sake of comparison, Protestants (of all stripes) represent about 40% of America, but only 16.3% of federal prisoners.

Catholics are 19% of the population, but 11.8% of federal inmates.

Muslims are 1% of the population, but 10.0% of those inmates.

The religion of 3.1% of federal inmates is “Unknown.”

Why such big discrepancies? Because 37.0% of federal inmates have no stated religious or non-religious label at all.

Humanists in federal prison

In 2015, because of a lawsuit filed by the American Humanist Association, the federal prison system agreed to acknowledge “Humanism” as a religious option, allowing nonreligious inmates to identify with that label and receive the same perks afforded to religious inmates, such as access to meeting space and the ability to discuss their beliefs with large groups. (“Atheists” do not receive the same opportunities.)

What do we know about the inmates in federal prison who identify as “Humanist” (rather than “atheist” or anything else)?

There are 51 inmates who use that label, representing a mere 0.033% of the total inmates. Even if all of those people identified as “atheist” instead of “Humanist,” that combined group would still make up less than 0.1% of the federal prison population.

These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt

There is bound to be a temptation to suggest these numbers show that atheists are more moral than religious people. But I would avoid saying that for a variety of reasons.

1. We don’t know why all of these people ended up in prison. The reasons are often much more complicated than we imagine. When you consider that high poverty rates, low formal education levels, and plain old racism are significant factors in incarceration rates, and that religious belief tends to correlate with many of those factors, it makes little sense to argue that atheists are better people using these numbers. Many of the same factors that help people ditch their faith also help them avoid the kind of decisions that lead to prison, whether it’s formal education or higher income levels. It’s not that religiosity and criminality are correlated, but rather that systemic problems and socioeconomic disparities in our justice system overlap with the kind of people who rely on religion to get through life.

2. All of these religious affiliations are self-reported. We don’t know how many atheist or Humanist prisoners fall into the categories of “No Preference,” Other, or Unknown. Hell, for all we know, some of them may have said they were “Catholic” because that’s the faith in which they were raised. There are also benefits to claiming you’re religious in prison that have nothing to do with the afterlife, and it’s possible that inmates who don’t believe in God (or don’t think about God at all) are either unfamiliar with the term “atheist” or unaware that they could use the “Humanist” label while also getting the perks of religious membership.

3. There are benefits for former inmates who are religious. There’s no shortage of stories of former inmates who receive shorter sentences or special perks or parole in part because they “found God” while behind bars. It also makes for a more inspirational story. While many of those anecdotes are undoubtedly true, it’s possible inmates cling to a religious label because they believe they’ll be perceived as better people. A Pew Research Center report from 2012 quoted a prison chaplain who said a lot of religious “switching” occurred behind bars, but those decisions were “primarily privilege based and not religiously based in my experience.” In other words, some prisoners said they were religious to get the benefits associated with it, not because they changed their theology. On the flip side, it’s also possible that some devout believers were so ashamed to admit their faith (and their hypocrisy) that they simply said they were non-religious, as if that might explain their crimes. We’re taking all this information at face value without the ability to dig deeper.

4. The data only take into account the demographics in the federal prison system. There are many more prisons out there at the state level, and I do not have the religious demographics of that population.

5. It’s unclear when this information was acquired. Was it when the prisoners were first admitted into prison? What if they changed their minds while in prison? How well does it reflect their current thinking about God? We simply don’t have those answers. If you’re just a nominal Christian (the sort of person who goes to church on Christmas and Easter but doesn’t care much beyond that), you might not go out of your way to make sure your religious label is Christian in order to access the benefits that come with it.

Why these numbers are still useful

Even with all those caveats, though, this information is enormously helpful for the general public because it counters the assumption that “immoral” atheists are found at higher rates in prison than in the general population.

Sociologist Phil Zuckerman wrote a book in 2019 called What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life (affiliate link), in which he talked about why atheists were undoubtedly coming out ahead on questions of morality:

In terms of who supports helping refugees, affordable health care for all, accurate sex education, death with dignity, gay rights, transgender rights, animal rights; and as to who opposes militarism, the governmental use of torture, the death penalty, corporal punishment, and so on—the correlation remains: The most secular Americans exhibit the most care for the suffering of others, while the most religious exhibit the highest levels of indifference.

The pandemic worked the same way; atheists were overwhelmingly on the side of science, vaccines, face masks, and social distancing while white evangelicals were… not. To put that another way, the things white evangelicals usually claimed as evidence of their morality didn’t actually show anything of the sort.

That line of reasoning applies to serious crimes as well. If you’re religious, the thinking goes, you would never do something so awful as to land you behind bars. Those who do such things aren’t real Christians, they argue. But when Protestants make up approximately 16.3% of the federal prison population, and Catholics represent 19%, and Muslims represent 10.0%, which we now know they do, it’s much harder to argue all of those people are exaggerating their beliefs.

And when finding an openly non-religious inmate in prison becomes as tough as finding a needle in a haystack, it’s much harder for Christian apologists and pastors to argue that faith is necessary to keep people on a righteous path.

These numbers are also helpful because it forces people to have a deeper discussion about our prison system as a whole and the role religion plays before and after anyone enters it. Handing prisoners a Bible will not make them better people. Requiring them to meet with religious chaplains, or listen to visiting ministers, or participate in Bible studies when they don’t actually believe any of that won’t make them better people.

In a statement, American Atheists’ Legal Director Geoffrey T. Blackwell told me, “the U.S carceral system continues to treat faith-based programming as the default solution for rehabilitation and recovery.” He said we have to work to make sure all prisoners “have access not only to sectarian choices but to comparable and meaningful secular alternatives.” AA President Nick Fish added: “Within a system that assumes religion, there is no incentive—and, too often, very real risk—in identifying as an atheist.“

They’re right to note the path to redemption does not necessarily go through God. As Freedom From Religion Foundation attorney Chris Line told me in response to this data, “prisons should provide meaningful secular programming and support alongside religious options. If a number of incarcerated people are nonreligious—or simply don’t identify with a faith—they should have equal access to rehabilitation, counseling, recovery programs, and community that aren’t tied to religion.”

For anyone interested in the federal prison religious demographics, along with a breakdown for each federal prison, you can see the information here.

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This week, the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family posted an otherwise innocuous message about what parents should do when their adult children no longer want to talk to them.

“Family estrangement,” the group explained, “can leave parents carrying grief, unanswered questions, and a deep longing for reconciliation.”

The advice was mostly predictable: Be humble. Listen “without becoming defensive.” Look for common ground. “Acknowledge where you’ve fallen short.” And, of course, pray a lot.

Family estrangement can leave parents carrying grief, unanswered questions, and a deep longing for reconciliation. While every situation is unique, healing often begins not with winning an argument, but with choosing the relationship.

Rebuilding trust may require humility, a willingness to listen without becoming defensive, and the courage and humility to acknowledge where you’ve fallen short. It can also mean accepting that your adult child is responsible for their own decisions while continuing to offer love, encouragement, and respect.

You don’t have to agree on everything to stay connected. Look for common ground, celebrate what is good, and affirm the person God created them to be. Even small steps toward understanding can create opportunities for restoration over time.

Most importantly, don’t stop praying. God sees what feels impossible and can work in ways we never expect. As you pursue peace, trust Him with both your heart and your relationship.

If you’ve experienced distance with an adult child, know that you are not alone.

If almost any other group had posted that, it might have been decent advice (minus the prayer bit). Estrangement is painful and rebuilding trust really does require humility, accountability, and a willingness to listen. It’s never pleasant when your kids want nothing to do with you, especially when, in your mind, all you’ve ever done is try to keep them on the right track.

Just one problem: This message came from Focus on the Family, a group that’s done more than most to destroy familial relationships. There’s no acknowledgment in that post that they’re the reason many kids raised with the help of their ministry no longer want a relationship with their parents.

It’s wild to urge others to be humble when Focus refuses to display any institutional humility.

That became painfully obvious in the comments.

Before we get to that, though, it’s helpful to know why Focus on the Family is such a disaster for the families it claims to help.

Founder James Dobson wasn’t just a conservative who endorsed sex predator Donald Trump and alleged sex predator Roy Moore. For decades, he promoted an authoritarian model of parenting in which adults maintained control of their kids through fear and pain. In his 1970 book “Dare to Discipline,” and later, with books like “The Strong-Willed Child,” Dobson openly advocated beating children into submission.

He began the latter book with an anecdote about beating his family’s dog Siggie (short for Sigmund Freud) with a belt as an example of what you needed to do to your kids.

“The only way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works,” he wrote, before bragging about how “That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast.” Siggie weighed a mere 12 pounds. Dobson was 200.

He closed that section with the moral of the story: “Just as surely as a dog will occasionally challenge the authority of his leaders, a little child is inclined to do the same thing, only more so.” He later wrote, “When that nose-to-nose confrontation occurs between generations, it is extremely important for the adult to win decisively and confidently. The child has made it clear that he’s looking for a fight, and his parents would be wise not to disappoint him!”

If you assumed he would have learned better in the years to follow, that wasn’t the case at all. As recently as 2015, Dobson was still encouraging parents to inflict physical pain. If spanking didn’t work, he argued, it may be because you’re not doing it hard enough.

The spanking may be too gentle. If it doesn’t hurt it isn’t worth avoiding next time. A slap with the hand on the bottom of a multi-diapered thirty-month old is not a deterrent to anything. While being careful not to go too far, you should ensure he feels the message.

That was his blueprint for domination. It taught a lot of parents that the best relationship with their kids was always one in which the parents won.

Dobson didn’t just offer shitty parenting advice. He was just as ignorant about sex, though he pretended to be an expert in that, too. He promoted Purity Culture before “Purity Culture” was a thing. Sex only came in one flavor: missionary style, with your wife, where the man orgasms and the woman is… there.

Everything else was downright satanic.

He also used his platform to denounce all things LGBTQ.

In 2015, while denouncing pastors who were allies to that community, he claimed that the B in that initialism stood for orgies: “I would like them to think, just for a moment, about ‘LGBT’… The ‘B’ stand for bisexual! That’s orgies! Are you really going to support this?”

While we’re at it, Dobson blamed the Sandy Hook massacre on atheism, abortion, and same-sex marriage. He blamed a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas on “The LGBTQ movement… closing in on the God-inspired and established institution of the family.” He signed the Nashville Statement, which was a declaration of faith-based bigotry signed by some of the most powerful Christians in the country. He equated Obamacare to living in Nazi Germany.

Dobson’s entire career was devoted to scaring Christians too dumb to realize that Dobson had no clue what he was talking about. His parenting advice was awful. His sex advice was awful. His political advice was awful. His idea of love involved hitting your kids, lying about gay people, and promoting violence against trans people.

As Kristin Kobes Du Mez wrote in Jesus and John Wayne, Dobson “corrupted a faith and fractured a nation.”

Dobson eventually stepped down from Focus on the Family, and later died, but the organization never meaningfully reckoned with the damage he caused. It may be less influential than it used to be, but it still reaches countless families with the same basic message: Conservative Christian parents are right, the outside world is dangerous, and children who reject those beliefs have gone astray.

That’s why this meme has never been more on point:

It’s also why the responses to that post included many comments from parents who still don’t understand why their kids have abandoned them.

Like this one, who condemned his son’s “(sinful) lifestyle choices” and refused to speak with the son’s “(woke) therapist.”

Another commenter chimed in to say she was in a similar situation, but she refused to “bend a knee to woke behavior.”

Another commenter insisted a “crazy woke therapist has damaged my adult child’s mind.”

In all those cases, it seems their children tried to explain their concerns to their parents—sometimes with professional help on their side—only to have the parents dismiss it all as ideological corruption. They wanted reconciliation but refused to do any work on their end to get there.

Then there was this mother who said her 38-year-old daughter wouldn’t talk to her because of all the “concussions” the daughter said she suffered, which led her to seek support groups and therapy. The mother blamed the daughter’s “personality disorder” and said she attended those support groups because “she likes the attention.”

So even when the abuse involved literal brain injuries, the parent still cast herself as the victim.

Another mother blatantly admitted she abandoned her son because he’s gay before arguing he was so disrespectful and that’s why he was now dead to her (“I have put him in God’s hands now”).

One commenter made the absurd claim that her 19-year-old child identified as a “transgender bug” and that a therapist “affirmed this.” There’s no reason to believe that happened, but instead of challenging her obvious anti-trans conspiracies, Focus on the Family replied with a link connecting her to one of their counselors.

In other words, this group did exactly what they told parents not to do: They validated defensiveness, avoided any kind of accountability, and reinforced the very bigotry that likely underlies the estrangement.

Other commenter understood the contradictions.

“The cognitive dissonance is absolutely incredible,” one person wrote. Another added, “Maybe Focus on the Family should shoulder some of the blame...nope, they put it back on the kids.”

One person directly called out parents who followed Dobson’s teachings: “If you raised your children according to the teachings of James Dobson, this is likely going to be the outcome for estrangement situations. His teachings were abusive plain and simple… You can’t sit around playing victim to a game you willingly played with your children.”

One person tried to talk sense into commenters (but received no takers in the replies): “This post disappointingly strengthens abusive parents and helps them to continue in their blindness, further extending the estrangement.”

Another wrote:

Until Christian organizations wake up and realize family estrangement is because the adult parents are stunted emotionally at a toddler age and counseling doesn’t even touch the root cause - there needs to be 2-4 year intensive program to grow the estranged parents up in a methodical way.

Can a toddler do therapy?

Why doesn’t someone wake up that therapy doesn’t work when a person has no self awareness.

(Even that person, though, suggested Focus on the Family could devote resources toward this problem, ignoring how Focus is sometimes the root cause of the problem.)

The bottom line is that a lot of these parents assumed their kids would grow up to become like-minded conservative Christians and were never prepared for the possibility that their kids might disagree with the core ideas their churches and ministries like Focus drilled into them.

This is the central problem with ministries like Focus on the Family in these situations. They frame estrangement as something that happens to parents rather than as a consequence they brought about by listening to Dobson. They refuse to admit estrangement is a boundary some kids established after years of rejection and abuse.

That’s before accounting for the physical abuse, sexual shame, and emotional trauma that groups like Focus normalized. Even in families without overt abuse, children learned that they were only ever going to be loved by their parents if they voted a certain way, married a certain kind of person, and led the life their parents chose for them.

Then those kids grew up and realized they didn’t need to play along with this version of conditional love. If that means not coming home for Thanksgiving or allowing their own children to interact with their grandparents, so be it.

That’s what happens to parents who care more about Focus on the Family than focusing on their families.

If Focus really wanted to help these parents, they would admit their mistakes and hire better experts in raising children to rewrite everything they’ve ever taught. It won’t solve the problems they caused but it could prevent future mistakes from happening again.

The children who walked away didn’t destroy these families. If anything, they were the first ones willing to break the cycle of abuse, and they should be commended for that.

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A new performance space in Sydney, Australia meant to showcase queer artists has been shut down after one night—all because the landlord and a group of Christian protesters objected to what happened onstage.

At the center of the conflict is the fact that this building used to be a church. Used to be. The building was deconsecrated in the 1930s and has since housed both a children’s school and a theater. Whatever religious significance it once had officially disappeared nearly a century ago.

More recently, with no one in the building, the New South Wales arts agency Create NSW awarded a $100,000 grant to Divine Playhouse to turn it into an inclusive space for artists. Its parent organization also pledged to invest $650,000 to support “more than 1,500 artists, producers, performers, technicians, small creative businesses and staff” over the one-year lease.

The organizers initially called it the “Unholy Playhouse” but abandoned that name after religious complaints. That concession was apparently not enough. When the venue finally opened last Wednesday, its artists enthusiastically embraced religious irreverence:

Catholic activists cited photos and videos shared from the venue’s opening night, including one of a performer dressed as a pig offering McDonald’s french fries as holy communion; performers dressed as nuns waving sex toys; and drag queens reenacting the birth of Christ.

I don’t know what show that was, but I want tickets.

It doesn’t matter if that production was offensive or not. It was for a willing audience inside a building that hadn’t been a church for generations. No one was forced to attend, much less applaud. Yet religious people protested outside and demanded the government rescind its $100,000 grant:

… the Catholic men’s group Fit for the Kingdom and Christian brotherhood the Prodigal Sons have claimed that the venue itself “mocks religious faith”, with about 70 supporters rallying there on Wednesday night and demanding that the New South Wales government withdraw a $100,000 grant…

The protesters essentially argued a former church could not possibly be a home for decidedly un-Christian art. One even argued that these performers could go anywhere else in the city:

“There is no shortage of venues across Sydney where the LGBTQ community is free to express itself and its artistic creativity,” a spokesperson from the Prodigal Sons said. “The selection of a former church is a deliberate and conscious decision.”

Or maybe it’s just a great performance space. Former churches have been converted to everything from skate parks to bars. The architecture and ambiance is the selling point. Just because Christians once occupied the space doesn’t mean it remains sacred forever.

Nevertheless, the protest had an impact because the next day, the owners of that building (“KCSYD Pty Ltd”) canceled the lease. They cited an obscure law that dates back to 1842 to make their case, though lawyers say that argument has never been tested in court. The company also said performers “insulted and mocked the sincerely held religious beliefs of millions of Christian Australians” and argued that future protests could disturb “adjoining properties and to the general public,” making their decision “reasonable.” That’s a textbook case of a heckler’s veto; they’re rewarding the people threatening disruption by silencing the target of their protests.

(Also, it’s hard to believe any landlord would lease space to “Heaps Gay Events” without understanding what that might entail…)

Making the landlord’s sudden decision even harder to swallow is the fact that there’s already a proposal on the table to tear down the building (along with nearby structures) in order to build luxury apartments at a cost of over $55 million. Apparently drag queens performing in the former church is a step too far, but demolishing the building is perfectly fine. That also means the decision to cancel the lease feels pointless; Divine Playhouse would have been out of there by this time next year.

For a short while, the group couldn’t even speak to supporters directly on social media because the platforms shut down their accounts on grounds of potentially offensive speech. But once that was cleared up and the accounts were reopened, Divine Playhouse explained the situation, saying they were exploring their legal options.

This has now become a battle about free speech and censorship. As the group pointed out, “Not every work will resonate with every person, but the freedom to make and experience art is part of what makes an open, creative and democratic society.” They’re currently looking for an alternative space. They’re also asking supporters to join them in protest of this censorship this weekend:

A fundraiser has also been created to help Heaps Gay founder Kat Dopper cover legal expenses. And a petition with nearly 18,000 signatures is calling on NSW Premier Chris Minns to provide emergency funding to the group to help them relocate and ensure they can be a home for the arts without censorship.

The good news in all this chaos is that several politicians understood the stakes and publicly sided with the artists.

When speaking at the venue’s opening on Wednesday, [Sydney’s deputy lord mayor, Jess] Miller celebrated the space as a place for community. “What happens between us when we come to places like this is we create [like] cathedral communities that are ultimately so much stronger for being together than for being split,” she said.

…

The NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann said Divine Playhouse should be celebrated as the kind of venue Sydney “desperately needs more of” and called on the state minister for music and the night-time economy, John Graham, to “publicly defend Divine Playhouse, its organisers, staff, artists and patrons”.

“[Graham] should make it clear that the government will stand with artists, venue operators and Sydney’s queer community, not with those trying to shut them down.”

Sydney’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore was also supportive, saying that “Sydney’s queer communities deserve places to create, perform, laugh, dance and belong” and that the closure of the venue was “disappointing and concerning.”

Not everyone was on board, of course:

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, told the Daily Telegraph government officials were investigating the grant application made by the venue’s organisers and said it was “hard to believe” the building was the “best location” for the performances by Divine Playhouse’s artists.

“There are millions of [other] venues,” he said.

The independent NSW MP Alex Greenwich said Sydney needed a wake-up call.

“What has happened with ‘Divine Playhouse’ is part of a worrying trend and I’m concerned that Sydney’s reputation is suffering as a global city,” he said.

James Thorpe, the “vice-chair of the Night Time Industries Association, founder of Odd Culture Group and a PhD researcher in nightlife safety,” penned an excellent column highlighting why this fight mattered. As someone who grew up in a church, he said this was the ideal space to push back against religion:

There is something rather audacious in telling queer people raised under the shadow of the cross that Christian iconography belongs exclusively to those who remained faithful to the institution. We are entitled to wrestle with it, parody it and subvert it. In many cases, it is part of our story too.

He noted that there are plenty of conservative Christians who make horribly offensive statements about LGBTQ people, yet he never sees calls for churches to be shut down as a result:

I find those views profoundly offensive but I have never demanded church doors be closed or tried to control what is said from their pulpits. I have never suggested [homophobic bigot Lyle] Shelton should be denied the taxpayer-funded salary he is seeking in the NSW parliament because I find his politics offensive. Nor have I demanded that religious organisations return the immense tax concessions they receive because I object to the speech they enable.

…

A liberal society cannot reserve public support for ideas nobody objects to. There would be precious little culture, politics or religion left. Christians may preach, protest and stand outside a queer venue and pray. They may tell me my life is sinful and my family is wrong. Queer artists have the same right to make art that is confronting, irreverent and, yes, offensive.

That is the bargain we make in a liberal democracy. It has to go both ways.

And then, in a reminder that the culture wars we see in the U.S. are no different from the ones in Australia, he added: “Australia is not a Christian nation.”

That’s exactly the point. If Christian groups can shut down a queer venue simply by protesting loudly enough, then every theater, museum, and library should be alarmed. Anything can be a “disturbance” if opponents complain aggressively enough. That’s why punishing the targets of that harassment emboldens the would-be censors.

Ideally, this decision to cancel the lease will backfire. The Christian groups will be mocked for their outrage. The landlords will receive negative press. And Divine Playhouse will hopefully get donations, publicity, and public support, which could mean larger crowds at future events and an even better space to hold events. The people who wanted these performances to disappear may have created far more demand for them.

This isn’t just about being offensive for the sake of it. Conservative churches have spent years telling LGBTQ people that their identities and relationships are sinful. It’s why reclaiming Christian symbols, through mockery or obscenity, is so damn satisfying. For so many people who have been harmed by religion, the irreverence is cathartic.

That’s why offensive art should be protected—and sometimes even celebrated. It’s not that every piece is brilliant. It’s that the very existence of this sort of art helps take away the power of those symbols. The freedom of expression matters far more than how some people interpret that expression.

Christians were free to hate the performance. They were free to protest outside, pray for everyone involved, and warn the public that God was furious about the sex toys and french fry communion. But they weren’t entitled to shut down the venue. The “offense” caused by one evening of queer performance is nothing compared to the lifelong harm inflicted by religious zealots who tell LGBTQ people their very existence is an affront to God.

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PERSONAL NOTE: Tonight, I’ll be interviewing Congressman Jared Huffman, the only openly Humanist member of Congress, about his new book No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism (affiliate link). It’s a fascinating exploration of the impact religion has on our government.

If you’d like to tune in, you can do so here!

Australia’s Bureau of Statistics conducts its census every five years, and it’s a valuable tool to understand the shifting religious demographics in the country. Unfortunately, because of the way the religion question is worded, the results will once again severely undercount the percentage of non-religious people.

That’s not speculation either. We can now say that with evidence thanks to a new survey sponsored by the “Census – Not Religious? Mark No Religion” campaign.

We’ll get to their results in a moment, but it helps to understand the dilemma.

All of this is a topic of conversation because the percentage of Australians with no religious affiliation has jumped from 22.2% in 2011, to 30.1% in 2016, to an astonishing 38.9% in 2021, marking a rapid shift away from organized religion.

While Christianity was still the most popular religion in Australia in 2021, that year marked the first time the majority of Australians said they were not Christian. There was even reason to believe that, by 2026, non-religious people could outnumber Christians given that 46% of Millennial Australians had no religion, compared to 30% of Baby Boomers.

But all of that really depends on how the religion question is worded… and that question has been the subject of all kinds of controversies over the years.

Here’s how the question looked in 2011:

You can see that “No religion” was placed in No Man’s Land at the bottom of a long list of options… including Other! It was so confusing! How many people saw the first options on the list and just filled in the bubble for whatever religion they were raised in regardless of what they actually believed? It was a horrible way to get accurate information.

In 2016, the question got a little better. “No religion” was placed at the top of the list, making it much more likely that people who left organized religion would see it and mark it.

But even then, it wasn’t perfect.

People without religion usually don’t use that language; they might use a specific label (e.g. atheist, agnostic, Humanist, etc). Plus, the way the question was laid out, it wasn’t clear whether a Humanist should fill in “No religion” or write in “Humanist” under “Other” like the instructions literally told them to do! (While the data collectors would eventually group those together, it was still confusing!)

There was another problem as well: The question itself—”What is the person’s religion?”—was biased because it assumed people were religious. It was coercive, in a way, because it implied you should have a religion and that not having one put you in a separate category.

Despite those legitimate complaints, the 2021 census posed the religion question the same way. (It was arguably worse than before because “Atheism” was explicitly listed as an example of “Other” as opposed to “No religion.”)

The bottom line is that the number of non-religious Australians—a number that has been on the rise for decades now—may be even larger than the census results show in part because of the misleading nature of the question itself.

Then consider all the other reasons people may have walked away from organized religion in the past decade. Since the 2016 census, marriage equality got legalized. When subjects like euthanasia and abortion became political battles, conservative religious views lost the argument over and over again. More Australians have come to realize that their sense of moral decency is incompatible with the bigoted views of the most powerful religious groups in the country. And on top of that, there have been plenty of scandals involving the most prominent Christian preachers in the country, including Brian Houston of Hillsong.

We’ve also seen campaigns by non-theistic groups urging people to mark “No religion” on the census as opposed to the more frivolous “Jedi.” They even put up billboards telling people to be honest if they’re not religious rather than filling in the religion in which they were raised or one that they only call themselves for cultural reasons.

That’s why there’s been such a jump in the “No religion” numbers. Australia is witnessing a massive shift in religious identity, and that’s true no matter how poorly the question is worded on the census.

But accurate information is important.

When Australia was gearing up for its 2026 census, atheists once again urged officials to ask the religion question in a way designed to obtain more honest results. In fact, in 2023, a coalition of non-theistic organizations in Australia called on the Bureau of Statistics to change the question by simply asking it in two parts:

1. “Does the person have a religion?”

2. (If yes) “What is the person’s religion?”

By asking it that way, not only would the assumption that everyone has a religion disappear, it would allow people to offer their own religious labels rather than picking from a pre-selected list of popular ones.

Indeed, the Bureau of Statistics tested that very model to see if it could work.

Unfortunately, last year, the Bureau announced it would not be making any changes to the religion question in 2026, mostly so it would be easier to compare future results with previous iterations of the question. They added that they also didn’t have enough time to test different variations of the question and analyze the potential consequences, which they would need to do before implementing it.

The feedback from consultation highlighted that it is not possible to design a question(s) that will meet the range of needs identified. In addition, understanding the impact that a question change would have on response patterns and comparability between Censuses requires a more extensive testing program than was possible within the 2026 Census timeframes.

Following the extended consultation, the ABS has decided to retain the question design used in the 2021 Census. This includes the question wording ‘What is the person’s religion?’, the 10 response categories, and a write-in box for other religions.

That said, the religion section will include additional instructions to “encourage respondents to use the write-in box if their religion… is not one of the response categories.” They will also remove “Atheism” as an example of “Other” so that there’s less confusion about which box atheists should mark.

There may be another reason they didn’t change the question, though: direct lobbying from powerful religious groups. The Rationalist Society of Australia’s Si Gladman published evidence that the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference literally asked the government not to change the question in 2026 because it would lead to “unwarranted complication for people who wish to record their religion.” Which is a fancy way of saying the Catholic Church doesn't want the public to realize it's rapidly losing its grip on society. The government didn’t mention the lobbying when explaining their reason for not changing the wording.

For that reason, the “Census – Not Religious? Mark No Religion” campaign decided to run its own version of the census with the question properly worded. They commissioned an outside group, Essential Media, to ask respondents two versions of the religion question to 2,000 people each: the official version… and the proposed revision.

For the first group (the official version), 43% of respondents marked “No religion,” which would be a small but predictable increase from 2021 if it actually played out that way.

But. The revised version of the question led to completely different results.

… when given a “yes/no” option first (“do you have a religion?”), followed by a text box to fill in if “yes” was selected, 54% of respondents picked “no”. That translates to about 2 million more adults without religion.

As predicted, the more accurate version of the question suggests an even less religious population.

Michael Dove, spokesperson for the Census – Not Religious? campaign, said the new polling provided the clearest insight into the extent of the impact of the leading question.

“We’ve long known that the leading nature of the Census religion question significantly inflates the data in favour of religion and undercounts the non-religious population,” he said.

“The Essential Research poll is the first to test the actual question that the ABS had proposed using versus the flawed question design that it decided to re-use. So it provides the best insight yet into the impact of the bias in the question being used in the 2026 Census.”

He said the ABS needed to fix the question for future Censuses.

He’s not kidding about fixing it, adding, “We’ve already got our eyes on 2031.”

While the census question they plan to use is disappointing because it won’t be as accurate as it could be, the silver lining is that the campaign to get more Australians to mark “No religion” will likely be larger than ever. That means there will be even more opportunities for Australians to realize this is a simple way to declare their freedom from religion once and for all.

Hell, there’s even a theme song (though this one is being released by a different organization working toward the same goal):

Despite undercounting the number of non-religious Australians, there’s still reason to believe Christians will finally be outnumbered when the results are finally released in 2027. Whatever the difference turns out to be, though, keep in mind the actual gap is likely much larger.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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PERSONAL NOTE: On Monday night, I’ll be interviewing Congressman Jared Huffman, the only openly Humanist member of Congress, about his new book No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism (affiliate link). It’s a fascinating exploration of the impact religion has on our government.

If you’d like to tune in, you can do so here!

In a now-deleted sermon (that still lives online because the internet never forgets), Pastor Sarah Lucas of “Foundations For Nations Church”—which is located within the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming—told her congregation that they needed to reject tribal traditions because all they needed was Jesus. She specifically targeted Sun Dance, the tribe’s “most sacred ceremony.”

“A pipe cannot hear your prayers,” she insisted.

After a clip of the sermon was shared online, it sparked outrage among Northern Arapaho Tribal members who now want the church to get the hell out of there.

While the sermon is no longer on the church’s YouTube channel, a clip went viral after it was posted by actor Christian Wassana:

Are we fighting the spiritual temperature in the atmosphere? Where it says tear down the altars, tear down the idols? And this nation gathered this week and they prayed… and they prayed to pipes and prayed to their ancestors, believing that this is the way for their freedom, to get free from addiction, for people to be healed from their sickness. This is what this culture did this week.

And we went on as church as normal. But here’s the thing: I feel like we’re to pray this morning before moving on. I feel like we’re to pray for our nation this morning, and we’re going to pray for our indigenous nation, our tribe this week, as they’re coming out of this, because we know that Jesus is enough. He’s enough. It’s not Jesus plus. It’s Jesus everything. He’s everything.

And, and I asked Stephanie, um, to come on up here. We’re gonna use her as a point of contact, but she is a born-again Christian, walked out this relationship with the Lord through generational Christianity in their household. And I’m gonna ask my Crow brother to come up because he’s walked away from this as well, to say Jesus is enough. And they understand… the price… when they say that publicly, the persecution that can come with them publicly. But they know that this is it. Jesus is the chain breaker. He is the only God that we should be praying to.

A pipe cannot hear your prayers. It’s just a piece of material, right?

And… this is a cycle they’re caught up in. This is all they’ve ever known. And the Lord is saying “Tear down the idols, tear down the altars, the idol worship.”

To put that in even simpler terms, Lucas was saying that Christians understand reality better than the Indigenous people in their community, and it’s their responsibility to eradicate tribal culture in favor of religious indoctrination. They’re too dumb to understand what Jesus taught, so we need to help educate them! It’s the sort of Christian arrogance you typically hear from teenagers on mission trips to other countries.

Wassana responded:

… It feels like history repeating itself, with attempts to erase and discredit our traditional way of life. Our lodges and ceremonies existed long before any church came to this land. Our ceremonies and way of life are a way of healing, identity, and connection for our people. Everyone has the right to practice their own faith. But claiming that one path is the only path while belittling and condemning ours is deeply disheartening. Respect should go both ways. Our traditions deserve the same dignity and respect as any other faith.

He added that what Lucas said was kind of like walking into a church and mocking the cross.

Belittling and condemning other traditions by insisting your path is the only correct path, of course, is a hallmark of religion—and evangelical Christianity in particular. What makes this unusual, however, is that Lucas isn’t some outsider who can play ignorant about the dynamics in her community. She fully acknowledges how this sort of rhetoric will come across when she says in her sermon that dismissing tribal ceremonies will risk “persecution.” She does it anyway, though, because she has no respect for the Northern Arapaho people.

It’s why, days after the sermon was delivered, more than 100 tribe members peacefully protested outside the church. (Reporter Vince Tropea has incredible pictures and video.) Many of the protesters are Christian themselves, but they insisted there was no conflict between tribal traditions and their religious beliefs—something other churches in the community fully embraced:

“…They don’t know our prayers, they don’t know how powerful our prayers are when we come together, and we pray out of our hearts to the Creator,” Debbie Lonebear added to [chairman of the Northern Arapaho Business Council Keenan Groesbeck’s] words. “The Creator is the same. It’s the same as who they worship. Anywhere we go, it’s the Creator that we talk to. …So, no apology accepted. They said what they said. They’ve done the damage. They need to go.”

Local indigenous rights advocate Big Wind Carpenter said that traditional native beliefs and Christianity don’t have to be “mutually exclusive,” and highlighted the work they have seen done at the St. Stephen’s Mission.

“I think that there’s a lot of people who would consider themselves both traditional and Christians. I don’t think that those ideas are mutually exclusive,” Carpenter commented. “This land was given to churches. You have seen St. Stephen’s Mission, and I think it’s a prime example of how a group can come in and actually respect those people’s ways. St. Stephen’s Church has never treated us like that, has never said it’s one way or the other, that it’s black or white. They have actually accepted a lot of our traditions. Sweats have been held at St. Stephen’s plenty of times.”

In addition to the protests, someone put a sign outside the church’s food pantry reading “Colonization is a plague.”

To be clear, they can’t just kick the church off the tribal land because it actually sits on private property within the reservation. But they sure as hell can make her life uncomfortable. During one protest on July 7, organizer Chris Friday urged people “Don’t go to their food bank. Don’t go to their events. Don’t let your children go.”

Members from the two sides ended up meeting in person to see if they could resolve their conflicts, but, to no one’s surprise, that didn’t go well. Friday later said Lucas offered no apologies for what she said.

That led tribal leaders to ask Lucas to leave the reservation. She wasn’t wanted there. They arguably do not have the legal authority to kick her out but they essentially told her she wasn’t welcome in their community. Lucas insisted she wasn’t going anywhere.

“You could take everything from me but you can’t take my God,” said Lucas. “I’m willing to be martyred for the faith. I’ve counted the cost.”

She’s not a martyr. She’s just an arrogant preacher who assumes she knows better than everyone around her and would rather destroy the entire community than live in a society where not everyone shares her views.

This isn’t anything new. The history of Christians interacting with Indigenous tribes is littered with stories of the former abusing the latter, as Wassana pointed out:

Christian Wassana, an enrolled Cheyenne Arapaho of Oklahoma who played Martin Kills Many on “Yellowstone,” told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday interview that tribal members are still wrestling with troubling treatments by past, Christian-affiliated missions, such as the boarding schools that forbade the children from speaking their native languages.

…

Indian boarding schools proliferated in the nation a century ago, many run by religious groups and funded with federal money.

Historical accounts tell of tribal leaders who wanted their kids to gain an education, a federal government that wanted to assimilate the kids and religious leaders who wanted to convert them.

It’s that history that Lucas seems blissfully unaware of, even after coaxing from other Christians with their own tribal backgrounds.

This past week, the church sent out a message to supporters asking for money to take this battle to court so they can continue trashing tribal traditions in a church within the reservation. But as far as I can tell, there’s been no formal demand that the church leaves its premises. The tribes literally don’t have the power to kick them out. They simply let her know how offensive her comments were and asked her to go… which she refused to do. So demanding money for a court battle that doesn’t exist is just another level of Christian arrogance here.

It’s also worth pointing out another connection that I haven’t seen in articles about this situation: Lucas has the blessing of Christian Nationalist preacher Andrew Wommack, who has made no secret of his desire to take over local communities. She attended Wommack’s Charis Bible College and Wommack even helped raise the money for the church to be built within the reservation land.

That connection makes this conflict even more disturbing because this isn’t just about one pastor saying something offensive, then pretending it was everyone else’s fault for calling her out on it. It’s part of a larger evangelical project that treats communities as territories to be conquered. She doesn’t see the Northern Arapaho people as fellow community members. She sees them as targets. She has no respect for their traditions while demanding they respect hers.

That’s history repeating itself. After all, we know what Christians have done to Indigenous tribes and we know the message they’ve always sent: Your ancestors were wrong, your ceremonies are evil, and your culture must be destroyed.

That’s why the pushback isn’t “persecution.” It’s just another instance of (actually) persecuted people fighting back against their oppressors. They’re not demanding that Christians abandon their faith—many of them are Christians. They’re just asking for mutual respect from someone who refuses to give any. Someone so arrogant she’s already fundraising off of their outrage.

Kudos to the Northern Arapaho people for making it clear that their land isn’t a laboratory for Wommack’s Christian Nationalist ambitions.

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A high school basketball coach in California told his team that they needed to regularly fill out a Christian journal with affirmations and prayers—and punished them with laps if they refused to do it.

The practice only stopped after a parent of one of the athletes contacted the Freedom From Religion Foundation about it.

All of this took place last year at Enterprise High School in Redding. The parent said Coach Abie Ramirez gave his team copies of the “Empowered Christian Athlete Journal” in order to track their development.

The book purportedly helps students “who want to perform at their best, in sports, school, and life by grounding their strength in Christ.” Students are asked to complete journal entries about things like a time they failed, what they learned from it, etc. While a secular version of that could be helpful, this book includes Bible verses to justify self-improvement because the ultimate goal is to make sure they convert. The book’s creator, Derek Ward, openly brags about how religion is necessary to be the best version of yourself, describing the journal as a “mindset and faith training system.”

The journal would have been bad enough, but a failure to complete an assignment came with punishments—double the running, in one case—which the parent preserved in the form of screenshots of the coach’s messages:

In a letter FFRF attorney Samantha F. Lawrence sent the Shasta Union High School District, she even quoted the parent talking about why this was such a problem:

The parent who contacted us further explained that they “are very angered and disappointed . . . that a Christian based journal would be pushed at a public school” and “our child would be disciplined for not participating” in the religious journal activities. They went on to say that they are not a religious family, and that the faith-based journal assignments crossed the constitutional line.

You have to appreciate the parent being so open and honest here. In so many cases where a public school coach is pushing religion on kids—even when it’s indirect, like Coach Joe Kennedy, who demanded the right to pray at midfield after football games—the assumption is that everyone is on board and that no student has a problem with it.

The church/state separation side tries to remind people that that’s almost never the case; students don’t want to jeopardize their spot on the team, create discord among teammates, or push back against their coach. The point is: It’s foolish to assume everyone’s Christian no matter where in America you are.

That’s why FFRF asked the district to “immediately investigate this situation and ensure that Coach Ramirez ceases pushing religion onto students in violation of the First Amendment.”

It worked. The district eventually wrote back to say the promotion of religion would stop immediately.

The District conducted an investigation into the matter and confirmed that the journal was used. Upon completion of the investigation, we informed the coach that the use of the journal in this context should not continue moving forward.

In addition, the District will provide training and guidance to staff to ensure a clear understanding of expectations and to help prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.

It’s the right response and confirms that what the coach was doing was completely inappropriate.

“This is one of the more egregious misuses of authority we have recently seen by a public school coach,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Coaches wield enormous influence over young athletes, and that authority cannot be used to pressure students into participating in religious exercises. Public school athletics should build teamwork and character, not serve as a vehicle for religious indoctrination.”

We have not heard any statement from Ramirez himself apologizing or even acknowledging that he crossed a line. Nor have we heard why he thought this was a good idea to begin with. In any case, because of one parent and one watchdog group, he won’t be able to push his religion on kids in the future.

I hope he’s learned his lesson, though. When you’re an authority figure who controls students’ playing time, discipline, recommendation letters, and, in some cases, scholarship opportunities, you shouldn’t make any of that dependent on the kids sharing your religious beliefs. That’s just coercion and it helps no one improve.

It’s also why these cases deserve far more attention than they usually receive. If an atheist coach told students they needed to reject God because only they had all the power on the court, it’d be covered non-stop in right-wing media. But it’s hard to believe this will get much coverage even at a local level.

Keep in mind that the district didn’t really reprimand the coach at all. He was told to stop with the Christian journaling… but that’s it. There’s no indication this will affect him in any meaningful way. There’s no “strike” on his record. It feels like he suffered the bare minimum. Without meaningful consequences, though, the lesson to other coaches is that the worst thing that happens if you violate students’ constitutional rights is that you might be asked to stop, maybe, if anyone catches you. It’s not much of a deterrent.

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The consequences of religion and anti-abortion zealotry are taking a toll in northern Idaho, where doctors from a neighboring state are refusing to cross the border to provide maternal care to patients because, to do so, they have to sign a contract pledging to be straight and Christian.

Here’s the situation: Republican-dominated Idaho passed a near-total abortion ban in 2022, and that led to an exodus of OB-GYNs from the state. One estimate found that a third of doctors in that field left the state over the following two years because they feared being prosecuted simply for providing medical care to patients. Some retired early. Some stopped providing certain kinds of care, a move that hit rural areas especially hard. And many just moved to states that value medical expertise. The result was that, in the 37 least populated Idaho counties, home to a quarter of the state’s residents, there were only 23 OB-GYNs. (For comparison, the seven most populated counties had 151 OB-GYNs.) They had no choice; providing care could have led to imprisonment or the loss of their medical licenses.

The bottom line is that women who need abortions or have riskier pregnancies in those communities are in danger, all because conservative Christians don’t give a shit about their health. Under the guise of protecting the unborn, Idaho Republicans have made life miserable for the living. The state is unsafe if you’re a pregnant woman, especially one who doesn’t want to be pregnant, and it’s unsafe if you’re a practicing OB-GYN.

In some cases, the only option for pregnant women who need medical care in certain parts of Idaho is a Christian “crisis pregnancy center.” Those are the places that pretend to be alternatives to actual health care facilities but have a religious, anti-abortion mission.

That’s the situation in Sandpoint, Idaho.

A few years ago, Bonner General Health, the local hospital, shut down its labor and delivery unit due to the issues listed above. They even said this in an FAQ explaining their decision:

Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult. In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care. Consequences for Idaho Physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines.

Even though this was a town of 10,000 people, pregnant women would have to travel at least an hour away to get proper care in one of Idaho’s larger cities.

That left an opening for a Christian non-profit, 7B Care Clinic, to pretend they were picking up the slack, even though they’re not a licensed medical facility and don’t provide certain kinds of care. But not to worry! According to a CBS News article from May:

The organization plans to add to its current building once it’s paid off, [Executive Director Janine] Shepard said, and it’s in talks with a hospital about 30 miles away in Washington state to bring in an OB-GYN once a week to provide prenatal care.

That was at least some good news. A real doctor would come by once a week to meet with patients. It’s not the same as having dedicated doctors in the community, but it was a step in the right direction.

But now that arrangement has blown up, according to a stunning article by Sophia Mattice-Aldous of RANGE Media.

The hospital in question was Newport Hospital District in nearby Newport, Washington, and the plan was for a real doctor (licensed in both states) to visit 7B Care every two weeks to meet with patients. In return, the clinic would pay the hospital $200/hour.

But when Dr. Kevin McNamee visited 7B Care on June 2 to begin the program, he was handed a Statement of Faith to sign… that required him to be Christian and anti-LGBTQ.

Not only did the clinic have a No Jewish/Muslim/Atheist/Gay/Trans Doctors Allowed policy. The Statement required single doctors to be “committed to sexual purity” and married doctors to be “in a heterosexual marriage consisting of one biological man and one biological woman.”

McNamee didn’t sign the document. The hospital canceled the contract with 7B Care the next day.

The district’s CEO Kim Manus said in a report to the Newport hospital’s administration and board of commissioners she learned of the statement of faith the same day McNamee did.

“The District was not informed during negotiations that its providers would be required to individually subscribe to religious doctrines, ministry principles, or additional conditions of participation as a prerequisite to providing services,” Chief Financial Officer Justin Peters wrote in a letter to 7B Care Clinic terminating the PSA dated June 3.

7B Care responded a week later by acting shocked that any of this was a surprise. Of course they’re pushing their religious beliefs on everyone. That’s what they do!

We were surprised by the assertion that the Statement of Faith and Statement of Principle were not disclosed prior to execution of the Agreement or that their existence was concealed during negotiations.

Life Choices Pregnancy Center has always operated as a Christian, faith-based ministry. Our mission, public communications, governing documents, website, organizational practices clearly reflect that identity. At no time did we attempt to conceal our religious nature or the values that guide our ministry.

Of course no one was denying that the clinic was faith-based. But it’s not a stretch for the hospital to believe the clinic needed actual doctors with medical expertise, not other automatons who share their religious views.

Shepard said she made it very clear that doctors would need to abide by the religious policies:

During the negotiation process, I specifically raised the issue of our Statement of Faith and asked whether participating providers would be willing to sign it. Dr. Reinke said that all were Christian and it would not be a problem.

Even if the hospital representative who negotiated the deal assumed their doctors were all Christian, that’s still a far cry from a contract that requires them to be conservative anti-LGBTQ Christians. (Leave it to a religious zealot to assume there’s only one kind of Christian.) Shepard also said the Statement of Faith was included in their discussions earlier this year, though the hospital denied that anyone was aware of that.

“I personally attended the meeting; a copy of this document was not handed out,” [CEO Kim] Manus said.

Ultimately, you had one group of people who wanted to help patients with no strings attached… and a Christian ministry made up entirely of strings.

The result is that pregnant women in Sandpoint won’t be able to get the help they need in their community because of Republican politicians and Christian ministries that falsely believe they can provide enough care to patients on their own.

None of this should be surprising to anyone. It’s the natural consequence of anti-abortion ideology replacing actual health care. Idaho Republicans drove OB-GYNs out of the state by threatening them with prison for doing their jobs, and a Christian “crisis pregnancy center” that stepped into the void cared more about policing doctors’ religions, marriages, and private lives than bringing qualified medical professionals into a community that desperately needs them.

Instead of helping to repair the damage wrought by Republicans, 7B Care has only proven why clinics like theirs aren’t substitutes for legitimate medical facilities. Much like Catholic hospitals, their first obligation is to religious doctrine, not patients’ needs.

Kudos to the Newport Hospital District for making the right decision and ripping up the contract. No reputable public hospital should have its doctors signing religious loyalty tests in order to provide care.

Keep in mind this is not an isolated incident. You’re going to see more cities like Sandpoint running into similar problems because conservative Christians got everything they ever wanted. They forced doctors to flee, got hospitals to shut down essential departments, and ushered in unlicensed ministries masquerading as health clinics. We saw this coming from a mile away. It’s what always happens when the people who don’t value women’s health take control of it.

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In the middle of his three-hour interview with Joe Rogan yesterday, J.D. Vance played dumb about why Ten Commandments posters are being forced into Texas public school classrooms while pretending they were a necessary correction to liberal overreach.

They were talking about the new law to shove the Decalogue into schools, and how Senate candidate James Talarico, a seminarian and Christian himself, gained notoriety years ago for highlighting the hypocrisy of the people voting for the bill. (That law was struck down by a federal judge but more recently upheld by an ultra-conservative appellate court.)

Vance had the opportunity to just freely admit this was about bringing Christianity into schools. Instead, he lied and acted like that wasn’t the main goal. The two men spent ten minutes discussing the Ten Commandments, which is to say Vance had ten minutes to lie his ass off about the purpose of the law and the motivations of the Republicans behind it.

At 48:22, Vance argued, “I don’t think putting the Ten Commandments up in school is, like, forcing things on anybody.”

That’s exactly what this is about. Republicans have long pretended like the law is about honoring American history or our legal past, but when the bill was being debated, Texas Republicans defended it by saying things like “It is incumbent on all of us to follow God’s law” and “This is a Christ-centered legislative body.”

Furthermore, the Texas law requires the posters—with their specific King James Version of the Commandments—to go up in every classroom. Kids can’t avoid it even if they wanted to. That’s the problem.

Leave it to a member of the Trump administration to not understand why forcing things on children is a bad idea.

At 49:19, Vance said, “Our founders were people who were very much influenced—even if they weren’t Christians, a lot of them of course were—but were very influenced by Christian culture.”

This is wildly exaggerated. The Founders were influenced by a lot of people and ideas, including Enlightenment thinkers, English common law, and religious freedom. But there’s a reason Christianity and Jesus and the Bible don’t appear in the Constitution. They knew our country shouldn’t have a religious foundation, much less a specific religious one.

At 51:06, Vance insisted, “I think all of the Abrahamic faiths recognize the Ten Commandments as, like, a significant thing.”

No they don’t. Islam recognizes Moses as a prophet, but the Qur’an doesn’t include the KJV Ten Commandments, nor do Muslims consider the version up in Texas classrooms some kind of authoritative text.

At 51:28, Vance said, “This is, like, an important cultural element of the western civilization.”

No it’s not. The Commandments aren’t part of our culture, much less the culture of all of western civilization. Several of the Commandments are explicitly religious and therefore meaningless to tens of millions of Americans.

Without the Commandments, you would still have rules about honoring your parents and not committing crimes. With the Commandments, you get plenty of additional bullshit.

At 51:46, Vance smugly stated, “If you look at the Ten Commandments, probably eight of them are something that I would hope that everybody would agree with, even if they're that not themselves religious.”

He can’t even name them, can he?

There may be two Commandments that everyone can agree with—don’t kill, don’t steal—but the rest are irrelevant or debatable. At the very least, you won’t find solidarity on the Commandments involving not having other gods before you, not creating graven images, not taking the Lord’s name in vain, and keeping the Sabbath holy.

Too bad Rogan didn’t ask Vance to list off all the Commandments.

At 51:56, Vance stated, “I would not be offended if I sat in a classroom as a Christian, or if my kids sat in a classroom as a Christian, and saw, you know, a religious text that wasn’t Christian on the wall.”

It’s very easy to say this when you know damn well Muslims and Satanists and atheists aren’t pushing to have their own endorsed texts on classroom walls. But if another religion managed to do that, Vance’s conservative allies would flip the hell out. There’s no way they would just smile and say they’re glad their kids are exposed to the Seven Fundamental Tenets of The Satanic Temple.

At 53:12, Vance claimed, “Freedom of religion is itself not really a liberal concept. It was originally derived from… a Christian idea about free will and the dignity of the person.”

This is just plain fiction. The writings of John Locke and Enlightenment philosophy played significant roles in our concept of religious freedom. The Bible did not. And if you want a sense of what “Christian” nations look like in history, they’re ones where heresy is criminal and religious minorities are persecuted.

At 53:32, Vance asserted, “It’s not like they’re putting the Ten Commandments in front of these kids and saying, ‘You have to read this and, you know, write it 500 times a day.’”

That’s irrelevant. Even if students aren’t asked to read or recite the Commandments, it’s still considered coercive to promote Christianity in the classroom the way they’re doing in Texas.

Vance might realize this if he had the ability to put himself in anyone else’s shoes. But empathy isn’t one of his strong suits.

At 53:41, Vance declared, “They're exposing kids to something. And I'm comfortable with kids being exposed to a lot of different things”

No surprise that a member of the Trump administration loves it when kids are exposed to things...

Anyway, this just mischaracterizes the law because Texas isn’t exposing kids to other religious beliefs. They’re elevating one religion above all others. That’s the problem. If exposure were the intent, teachers could bring up the Ten Commandments in a comparative religions class or even as part of another lesson. Exposure doesn’t require shoving a Christian poster in kids’ faces every single day.

Plus, Republicans are the ones who flip out whenever there’s a rainbow symbol on a teacher’s wall. Exposure, for them, only ever goes in one direction.

At 54:32, Vance proclaimed, “For a long time in this country, there were actually Supreme Court rulings that said that you cannot pray in a school, even a student organization led by the students, or that you cannot put the Ten Commandments up, even a teacher who chose to do it in their own classroom.”

No one, including the Supreme Court, ever said prayer was banned in school. Mandatory, teacher-led Christian prayers are not okay. Prayers over the loudspeaker at school events are not okay. But individuals who want to pray on their own or with friends? Not a problem. As long as it’s not coercive or forced upon students, no one’s stopping teachers or student groups from praying as they see fit.

Also, there’s a reason teachers can’t put up Christian symbols or Bible verses in the classroom. The laws requiring government neutrality on religion are good ones!

At 55:50, Vance argued, “I just think the balance in our country the last 30-40 years has actually been much more in the other direction, which is that we try to completely remove religion from the public square.”

This has never happened except in the deranged fantasies of Christian Nationalists and God’s Not Dead screenwriters. Religion was never removed from the public square. People can talk about it all they want. They can even put up religious displays as long as other groups are given the same opportunities.

The difference between 40 years ago and now is that we’re much more likely to realize religion is not a virtue… and that’s in part because we’ve seen what powerful religious people like JD Vance do with their faith. Vance demands respect for his beliefs even though they don’t deserve it.

At 56:35, Vance contended, “The late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist sort of said this: that if your approach to religion in public life always and everywhere is to push it out of the public square, then you’re actually embracing a religion of your own in the public square, which is secularism. You’re just taking one religion and replacing it with secularism.”

No one’s pushing religion out of the public square, and secularism isn’t a religion. Vance is pretending that government neutrality on faith is some kind of atheistic position. If atheists were trying to get governments to say God doesn’t exist and trying to ban any mention of faith in public spaces, maybe he’d have a point, but those are things that have never happened anywhere ever.

Neutrality is not oppression.

At 57:00, Vance stressed, “If I’m in a 95% Christian community and my local city council wants to put up a Nativity display on, you know, Christmas Eve, I’m okay with that.”

Again, it’s easy for Vance to say he’d be comfortable when it’s his faith being promoted by the government. But the whole point of the Constitution is that a majority of people can’t override our rights. It wouldn’t matter if 99% of a city was Christian; they still can’t promote their religion on city property without giving the same opportunity to everyone else.

At 57:50, Vance claimed, “I also don’t think that the expectation should be that we tell religious people they’re not allowed to be religious in the public square.”

No one has ever said this to religious people. They can be religious. Even in public. What they can’t do is use their government positions to shove Jesus in kids’ faces, which is exactly what conservative Christians in Texas have been trying to do.

Ultimately, Vance refused to admit the obvious: No one would be complaining about the Ten Commandments in school if they were part of an objective lesson in an appropriate class. But that’s not what’s happening here. Texas Republicans jammed a specific version of the Commandments into every classroom in the state, and the courts, as of now, are letting them do it.

Talarico—whose name Vance refused to say properly, which I would argue is a sign of disrespect—had it right when he called out the hypocrisy on this matter years ago.

The bottom line is that Texas conservatives have used the courts to tell kids which religion counts—and which ones don’t. By doing so, they’re sending a message that kids from non-Christian families (or the “wrong” kind of Christian ones) are second-class citizens.

Christians like Vance would be furious if schools put up non-Christian lists of moral values. But because it’s his religion in control, he doesn’t give a damn. Instead, he played dumb so well that Rogan came off as the voice of reason in their conversation.

Vance never offered a serious defense of the Texas law. Instead, he offered Rogan a series of lies and deliberate mischaracterizations meant to make Christian supremacy sound like harmless cultural appreciation. He couldn’t tell the difference between private religious expression and government-sponsored faith. He falsely claimed the alternative to forced Christianity was religious neutrality. Either the vice president genuinely doesn’t understand the most basic principles of religious freedom or he understands it perfectly well and knows that lying about it is politically useful.

If Vance truly cared about exposing kids to different beliefs, he would demand that schools treat those beliefs equally. He doesn’t. He only becomes passionate about “religious freedom” when it involves his own religion getting special privileges. Because Christian Nationalists like him don’t want a public square where every faith can flourish. They want one where only their faith is dominant—and critics are always accused of trying to erase their religion.

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Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants everyone to know her state is finally #1 in something.

Not crime. They’re 48th in that.

Not health care. They’re #47.

Infrastructure? Nope. They’re #41.

It sure as hell isn’t education, where they’re #36.

But they’re #1 when it comes to “Religious Liberty”… at least according to a right-wing Christian group looking for attention.

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders today announced Arkansas ranks #1 in the nation for religious liberty according to the First Liberty Institute’s Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy’s (CRCD) Religious Liberty in the States (RLS) index. Arkansas earned a score of 89.2%, becoming one of only two states to receive the index’s first-ever “excellent” rating.

“Religious liberty is America’s First Freedom, and Arkansas is leading the nation in protecting it,” said Governor Sanders. “Our rights come from God, not government, and every American should be free to live according to their faith and conscience. We’ll continue defending that freedom and ensuring the Natural State remains the best place in the country to live, work, and worship.”

It is downright comical that, even with the #1 ranking, Arkansas could still only pull off a B+. Also funny? New York was ranked last by the right-wing group, which Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani ought to wear as a badge of honor, given where the ranking is coming from.

The conservative group says the rankings were calculated by evaluating “50 legal protections across 20 safeguards… to support religious freedom in daily life from education and healthcare to family law, economic activity, and religious practice.”

To put that another way, if your religion is allowed to override civil rights protections for groups of people you hate, you’re rewarded for it. Same rule applies if your religion is allowed to ignore all the things that generally benefit society

For example, First Liberty explains, Christian judges in Arkansas are allowed cite their faith in defense of discriminating against same-sex couples.

Arkansas’s rise to first place is due in large part to legislation adopted in 2025. The state enacted HB 1615, a law that protects individuals and institutions from being forced to participate in wedding ceremonies to which they have religious objections.

That bill, the ACLU noted, also allows taxpayer-funded faith-based adoption and foster agencies to discriminate against gay people and “undermine[s] nondiscrimination standards in education, licensing, and accreditation.” They added that the bill played on the unfounded fear that religious groups would be forced to violate their beliefs, “something that has never happened in the decade since marriage equality became law.”

HB 1615 also lets private business owners—bakers, florists, photographers, etc.— discriminate against LGBTQ customers. They can refuse to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple even if they would sell the same cake to a straight one. First Liberty says these “protections” save businesses from “being forced to participate in wedding ceremonies” against their will… as if the caterer at a wedding holds the same importance as the maid of honor.

These are the things Arkansas is being rewarded for.

Among the other things First Liberty considered in their rankings?

• Are clergy members allowed to keep pedophiles’ secrets a secret if they learn about them through the act of Confession? (Requiring them to be mandated reporters in those cases, which would help the victims, is considered a bad thing among conservatives.)

• Are houses of worship are allowed to spread a disease during a pandemic? (Conservatives threw a hissy fit when churches were prohibited from opening their doors for large services during the pre-vaccine COVID days. This was done to prevent the spread of an airborne disease because churches, unlike, say, grocery stores, are spaces where people talk and sing and spread germs in close proximity.)

• Do public schools let unvaccinated students enroll? (Herd immunity only works if enough people are vaccinated, which is why no one should be exempt from vaccines unless there’s a medical reason for it, but anti-science conservatives think vaccines should be optional.)

• Can employees avoid joining a union if they have a religious objection to it? (Conservatives want to decrease the power of those unions, thereby allowing businesses to take advantage of their employees, so any excuse to avoid paying union dues is considered a win.)

It’s just a laundry list of right-wing grievances devoid of consideration of evidence, reality, or what’s it’s like to live in a pluralistic society. There’s no attempt to understand why certain rules that benefit all of society (like with vaccines) are more important than the religious whims of the most ignorant members of society.

But Sanders was so eager to treat this ranking as some kind of victory that she held a press conference to celebrate the Christian equivalent of a participation trophy:

“Religious liberty is America’s First Freedom, and Arkansas is leading the nation in protecting it,” Sanders said. “Our rights come from God, not government, and every American should be free to live according to their faith and conscience. We’ll continue defending that freedom and ensuring the Natural State remains the best place in the country to live, work, and worship.”

Her God, she means. The Christian God. Because Arkansas is not a welcome place to be if you’re Muslim, atheist, or even a progressive Christian, and she’s made that explicitly clear over the years.

Just last year, she proclaimed that state employees would have Christmas Day and the day after that off—which would not be weird at all—while adding that they should use that time with their families “giving thanks for Christ’s birth.” It was a religious mandate so blunt that you didn’t have to do much work to realize how inappropriate it was.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent Sanders a letter urging her not to use sectarian language in official pronouncements—a perfectly sensible request! Sanders predictably reacted by cosplaying as a victim of religious persecution and insisting she would “do no such thing.”

That’s because she sees religious freedom as the freedom to shove her religion in everyone else’s face.

During her press conference yesterday, Huckabee claimed atheists were mad because she closed government offices over Christmas… even though the closures themselves weren’t the problem. Sanders went on to say she was proud to defend her decision to include a “detailed theological narrative presenting core Christian doctrines, including the divinity of Jesus Christ, his crucifixion for the sins of mankind, his resurrection, and his anticipated return in glory.” She confessed to the damn crime!

To put this another way, even while accepted a “religious freedom” award, Sanders used the opportunity to proselytize.

She didn’t stop there. She celebrated laws that protected “religious views on fundamental biological differences between men and women”—so making life more miserable for transgender people. And she boasted about a law “placing copies of the Ten Commandments in classrooms and state buildings despite liberal activists trying to stop us.” (A federal judge said that law was unconstitutional because there was “no educational purpose” for displaying the Ten Commandments and it was “coercive.” An appeal is pending.)

She closed her speech by saying, “In this administration, we don’t just believe that Jesus is our living hope, we will always stand up for the rights of Arkansans who believe the same.” Which, again, is an admission that only one religion ever matters to the “religious freedom” crowd.

By the way, not a single reporter asked a question after Sanders finished speaking, something she also celebrated: “Make sure that that headline reads just how we want it to: Arkansas ranked #1!”

The ACLU wasn’t buying the spin:

“It’s deeply ironic to celebrate Arkansas as the nation’s leader on religious liberty while state leaders continue to push policies that privilege certain religious beliefs, mandate religious displays in public schools, censor books, and target LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities,” Megan Bailey, communications director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, said in a statement. “The government does not protect religious liberty by elevating one set of religious beliefs over everyone else’s.”

It’s not the only time Sanders has used her position to advocate for Christianity. In 2023, she bragged about the stained-glass Christian cross “masterpiece” her children had created in front of the Governor’s Mansion, as if this was some kind of accomplishment worth celebrating.

And then there were all the political moves she’s made to directly benefit Christians, like okaying a voucher program to send millions of dollars to private religious schools (at the expense of public schools) and firing the State Library Board because they weren’t doing enough to ban books.

As I’ve written before, Sanders, much like her father, isn’t interested in merely blurring the line between church and state. She doesn’t believe such a line exists at all. She thinks her beliefs are state-sanctioned truths while everyone else’s beliefs are merely fiction. That violates the law she swore to uphold.

By the way, Arkansas remains one of a handful of states where, at least on paper, the state constitution literally prohibits atheists from holding office: Article 19, Section 1 says “No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.” It’s unenforceable thanks to the U.S. Constitution, but it’s still on the books in what we’re told is the greatest state for religious liberty. The legislature could begin the process to take that law off the books if they wanted to… but Republicans aren’t interested in doing anything to actually protect religious freedom for non-Christians.

The bottom line is that this ranking is a joke. It doesn’t measure “religious liberty” in any meaningful sense of the phrase. It measures how thoroughly a state has embraced the policy wishlist of the Christian Right. If lawmakers let conservative Christians discriminate against LGBTQ people, weaken public health protections, funnel taxpayer money to religious institutions, and inject Christianity into public schools, they rack up points.

If a state actually treats all religions—and those of us with no religion—equally under the law, it gets punished.

Muslims don’t get invited into this vision of religious liberty. Neither do atheists, Jews, Hindus, Catholics, or even Christians who reject her brand of conservative evangelical politics.

The real trick here is trying to convince people that defending conservative Christian privilege is the same as defending religious liberty for all. Sanders and her allies have to act as though the most politically powerful religious demographic in the country (and certainly Arkansas) is somehow an oppressed minority in desperate need of legal protection. It’s all political theater, which makes sense coming from a party whose leader constantly acts like he’s the victim of every conspiracy known to man.

So, congratulations to Arkansas on winning a contest where everything's made up and the points don't matter.

None of this validates what Arkansas is doing. It just exposes how superficial and pathetic the Religious Right’s definition of “religious freedom” has become.

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A Christian pastor who worked at a public library in Louisiana just filed a federal lawsuit insisting he was wrongfully fired after being an asshole to one of his colleagues by refusing to address them respectfully.

Or, as Liberty Counsel puts it, he was “unlawfully fired” for “refusing to lie and use false gender pronouns.”

I first wrote about technician Luke Ash, who worked at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, last year, but there’s now been a major update in his story.

The way he explains what happened, he was having a conversation with a co-worker last July about a new employee, whom he referred to using the pronoun “she.” Ash was told that was incorrect and the employee went by “he.”

That was unacceptable to Ash, because apparently he knew damn well this other person was a “biological and chromosomal female.” (How did he know that? No one knows.) “I refused to use those preferred pronouns,” he said.

The next day, he was reprimanded by his boss, maintained that he wouldn’t change his actions, and was subsequently fired for violating the library’s Inclusivity Policy, which says “all employees are welcomed, accepted and respected, regardless of… gender identity or expression,” and that means addressing colleagues using their “chosen name and pronouns.”

There’s an easier way to describe what happened to Ash, though: He was disrespecting one of his co-workers, then got fired after insisting he wouldn’t stop belittling them. He was warned about the consequences, didn’t give a damn about them, then lost his job. The library said it was “not working out for the work culture.”

It’s exactly what he deserved.

But that’s not how Christians have been spinning this.

Like bigoted bakers and florists before him, Ash insists he was punished because of his sincerely held religious beliefs… as if being a perpetual dick at work is one of Jesus’ most important demands.

And now Ash has filed a federal lawsuit insisting his religious rights were violated.

Liberty Counsel is seeking a permanent injunction that declares the library’s “Inclusivity Policy” is unconstitutional for violating his constitutional rights of free speech, religious exercise, equal protection, the Louisiana Preservation of Religious Freedom Act, as well as his religious protections under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The lawsuit also requests that the court order the library to reinstate Pastor Ash to his prior position, restore his benefits, and award backpay, damages, and attorney’s fees and costs.

The argument here is that asking people at a government institution to treat their colleagues with dignity and respect is too heavy a burden for conservative Christians, and that they’re substantially burdening his faith by telling him to use the correct pronoun.

Which is to say: No matter how hard he tries to pretend to be a victim, he’s the bully. He could, at the very least, just admit his religious convictions require him to treat certain people like shit instead of hiding behind his cloak of faith. He wasn’t fired because of his beliefs; he was fired because he was—and promised to keep being—a horrible colleague.

Ash actually had two jobs. In addition to his library gig, which he only had for six months, he’s the pastor of Stevendale Baptist Church, a job he held for an even shorter period of time when the library incident occurred. (The church’s website says he began preaching there in March of 2025.)

As soon as he got fired from the library, he immediately ran to his conservative buddies like he was a football coach from Bremerton eager to make this story all about how he was persecuted.

Sadly, that worked. He rapidly become a cause célèbre for conservatives.

Attorney General Liz Murrill chimed in, saying Louisiana “prohibits discrimination based on religion in the workplace.” Which was a ridiculous thing to say. He wasn’t fired because of his faith; he was fired because of his actions. It’s the same reason a Christian hate-preacher in Oklahoma, as far as I can tell, has not been fired from his government job yet! When he’s on the clock, he’s on his best behavior! Plus, you have to assume there are Christians who work in that library who still have their jobs because they don’t go around looking for ways to demonize their colleagues.

Governor Jeff Landry added at the time that “Louisianans should never lose their job because they refuse to lie!” Which should be welcome advice for everyone at that library who wants to tell Luke Ash he’s an ash-hole.

Other right-wing trolls eventually jumped on the same bandwagon, pretending the library violated some kind of religious freedom law that exists only in their broken brains. The American Spectator, for example, argued this wasn’t about Ash’s lack of basic decency at all: “Basic decency would be for the trans individual to respect Luke Ash’s recognition that she is a woman and not a man.”

Hate-preacher Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council argued that the library offers grace to patrons but not to bigots:

It is somewhat ironic that the library has a policy not to fine patrons who do not return books on time or return them at all, yet they fire employees who refuse to engage in forced speech, and play along with a lie.

During our interview, Luke described how the library selectively restricts access to books they disagree with, while accusing others of “banning” books.

“They think it’s a sin to ban books,” he said, “but they in effect ban them by not buying them, or making them hard to find. If you can pretend a book doesn’t exist, that’s even more effective.”

(Libraries have publicly stated policies for how they acquire books. Self-published dreck written by hate-preachers, for example, may not end up on the shelves. But a bestseller that has reviews published in major outlets will be. That’s not censorship. And books in libraries are not hard to find if you know what you’re looking for, something a library employee would know.)

Given how quickly this story rocketed through conservative Christian circles last year, it seemed almost tailor-made for this situation. I’ll admit even I put on my tinfoil hat when I heard this one because Why did Ash even want a job at a public library? When the sort of people who believe there’s only one book that matters, and who also celebrate the mass layoffs of government employees, purposely get a job at a public library, it was easy to believe Ash only applied to work there so that he could eventually sue the library over its policies.

As soon as he was fired, he immediately sat for an interview with Perkins, a fellow Louisianan with a massive megaphone. Within days, conservative pastors across the area wrote a letter to the library’s board demanding they gave Ash his job back and “change all DEI-directed policies that led to his termination.”

Perkins, by the way, invited Ash to attend a prayer event, which led to this wild picture of people putting their hands on him as if he had just suffered some kind of personal tragedy. No wonder the guy has a martyr complex.

But even if that was all coincidental, the bottom line is that Ash broke the rules and deserved to be fired from a job he clearly didn’t even want (given the way he speaks about the library).

While a more sympathetic “victim” would say he at least wants the library to succeed despite the way he was treated, Ash literally emailed the mayor of East Baton Rouge, Sid Edwards, to say he should consider defunding the library system.

Maybe that was his goal all along.

When all this happened last year, Christians like hate-evangelist Franklin Graham urged Ash to file a lawsuit, while a top Department of Justice official implied this was all a travesty.

Ash and his lawyers have now followed through. Hopefully a judge can set him straight because the Bible sure as hell isn’t doing it.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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Are you worried about the threat of Christian Nationalism? Do you support separation of church and state? Well, you need to think much, much bigger. Because a pro-Trump Catholic has made it his mission to put a giant cross… on the moon.

The “Cross on the Moon Coalition,” led by Iowan Justin Park, aims to plant the religious symbol on the lunar surface by the end of the decade. As if there wasn’t enough junk in space already. The goal? To “consecrate the heavens and remind humanity that God is the King of the universe.”

According to Talking Points Memo, this isn’t just a random whim from a random guy. He’s been working on this for a while, even creating animations showing what this would look like:

Park explained in an interview with the Davenport, Iowa-based Catholic Messenger that this was part of a plan to get in front of the future:

“It’s kind of a culmination of the skills that God’s given me, and the vision,” Park said. “Most people don’t think about space every day, but I do. … I read the Gospel as much as I can, but I also read a whole lot of space news … (I) think that we’re going to be living in space, within a generation or two, and we definitely want to get out in front of this and lead with our virtues and our values, and that really starts with Jesus Christ … Putting a cross on the moon kind of sanctifies the lunar surface, and it’s our best foot forward … and hopefully we’ll create a culture based on Biblical teachings.”

Because the problem with the moon is that there’s not enough bigotry and threats of damnation. Lovely.

TPM reporter Hunter Walker adds that there’s already a connection to Trump (because of course there is) involving the Freedom 250 “America Prays” coalition:

“America Prays” also features an extensive list of “partners” that includes major right-wing Christian groups, individual churches, religious media companies, the “influencers” Jack Posobiec, Alex Bruesewitz, and “DC Draino,” and the “Cross on the Moon Coalition.”

…

I also asked Park about the political aspect of his coalition. He told me that the group is “definitely aligned with Trump’s efforts to bring more prayer to America.”

“I have volunteered at multiple Freedom 250 events and applaud his participation in honoring our Savior Jesus Christ,” Park wrote.

What about the money? Oh, they have plenty of money.

Park said he hopes the Moon Cross can hitch a ride on a commercial spaceflight craft. He knows that will cost well over a million dollars and, as of last month, Park told the Catholic Messenger the coalition had “raised about a quarter of a million.” But Park has a plan for how to get the rest of the cash.

“The idea is really to find a big space advocate who hasn’t found the Lord yet. Ideally, we would want to convert someone like Elon Musk. The world would just be a whole lot better if we could, evangelize Musk and then make him into an evangelist,” Park told the Messenger.

Earlier this week, I emailed Park to see how all of that is going. He told me they “are actively fund-raising and working towards evangelizing the tech community.”

Imagine thinking the world would be better if the wealthiest man in the world, who has helped murder countless people around the world when he’s not dabbling in fascism, became a religious zealot.

In any case, no one needs the cross on the moon because it would serve no useful purpose. The website claims the Moon Cross would be useful because it’s “the ultimate unifying symbol of grace and glory, sanctifies the lunar surface.” But if Christianity is known for anything these days, it’s for dividing and harming people. That cross represents bigotry, oppression, and political cover for the most corrupt people in the country. The only people who think it’s unifying are the ones tearing the country apart.

Even beyond that, how limited must your imagination be to reach another surface in the solar system and think that it would be best served by imposing your specific beliefs? Space exploration, at its best, has always been defined by people around the world setting aside their political and cultural differences and working together toward a larger goal. To declare that one religion should rule over outer space is just comically idiotic.

That same debate, by the way, came up when we wanted to put an American flag on the moon because who owns the moon?! Also, even though there are U.S. flags up there, they’re purely symbolic in the sense that even NASA isn’t suggesting America has a right to that space. What Parks wants is much more all-encompassing.

And, of course, if any other religion even considered doing something like this, Christians would loudly whine about how space doesn’t belong to any one group. The rules never seem to apply to them.

If the Cross was ever put on the lunar surface, it likely wouldn’t last very long. It might degrade, at the very least. And that might be the most symbolic aspect of this. Even when left alone, Christianity gets worse over time.

Incidentally, we have a version of this conversation whenever Christians spend roughly a quarter-million dollars to erect a Giant Christian Cross in rural areas. It’s a lot of money that accomplishes nothing of value because the people who share Park’s version of faith have no real desire to help anyone on this planet with the resources they’ve accumulated. Instead, they want to find new places to ruin with their eyesores. And they intend to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to make it happen.

If wealthy Christians want to make a difference, there are plenty of homeless families to house, hungry children to feed, refugees to help, diseases to fight, and schools to support. Elon Musk could help undo the damage he caused with DOGE. But they won’t because they would rather advertise their faith than practice it.

If and when we land on the moon—or anywhere else outside our planet—in the future, we should be focused on conducting science and testing new technologies. We should have discussions about what a permanent presence beyond Earth might look like. Those endeavors could expand knowledge and inspire future generations.

But Park and his allies don’t think like that. They see empty space and immediately jump to the possibility of religious branding. There’s nothing visionary about that.

The arrogance is appalling. The moon doesn’t need to be sanctified. It doesn’t belong to Christians or Americans or anyone else. It’s part of humanity’s shared heritage. That’s why a symbol that billions of people either reject or have been harmed by isn’t some universal symbol of hope. It’s a sign that we can never escape the religious zealots in our midst.

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Christian Nationalist Micah Beckwith, the lieutenant governor of Indiana, said in a recent interview that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to publicly worship because “Judeo-Christian principles [are] our heritage.”

It’s the latest in a long line of hateful, bigoted, unconstitutional remarks he’s made since taking office.

The comments were made on the right-wing Conservative Review podcast in late June and got little attention until they were picked up by Right Wing Watch:

Beckwith slammed formal calls to prayer and equated Islamic prayers with “death and destruction”:

“We should ban the calls to prayer, public calls to prayer,” Beckwith declared. “If you’re a mosque and you want to have a loudspeaker and you want to start pumping these out five times a day locally, the state can say, ‘You’re not going to do that. We’re not allowing that. We’re not going to let you put these words of death and destruction throughout the city streets in any of our cities.’”

“Listen, we are a Christian nation,” Beckwith continued. “The Supreme Court in the Coach Kennedy case ruled that. They said, ‘Hey, the heritage of America is a Christian heritage and so that’s why Christianity takes precedent over all other faiths.’ Everyone can worship how they want, but you don’t get to implement Islam in our public spaces. You can’t put the Quran up on school walls, but you can put the Ten Commandments up on school walls. Why? Because of our Judeo-Christian principles. That’s our heritage.”

There’s so much wrong with all that…

The state literally cannot ban Muslims from worshiping in public or using loudspeakers to amplify their calls to prayer unless they’re violating a noise ordinance. Plenty of churches have bells that are rung loudly and those are subject to the same rules.

Also, the prayers are not calls for death and destruction any more than Christian prayers to Jesus. To assume they’re synonymous is just anti-Muslim bigotry mixed with Republican ignorance. It’s also wildly ignorant because when Christians urge others to worship Jesus, they’re implying that not doing so will lead to eternal torture—literal death and destruction.

Somehow, Beckwith’s legal lies are even worse.

The “Coach Kennedy” case involved the showboating public high school football coach who demanded the right to pray at midfield immediately after games (mostly to capitalize on attention). Despite all the evidence that this was coercive and no one was preventing him from praying on his own, the Supreme Court said he had a legal right to pray at midfield.

At no point in that ruling, though, did the Court say this established a Christian nation or that “Christianity takes precedent over all other faiths.” Not in those words and not even in spirit.

And while one right-wing appellate court has allowed Texas to put Ten Commandments posters on classroom walls, every other federal judge who’s dealt with those cases—and the Christian lie that those posters are not about promoting religion at all but rather reminding students about American history—has said those arguments are bullshit. Of course the Ten Commandments laws are about promoting one specific kind of Christianity.

So Beckwith doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s a pattern for him. Because he’s conservative Christian, he knows he can lie constantly and his Republican base will never call him out on it. It’s the same stupidity we saw when Beckwith trashed an Indiana high school marching band drum line for promoting Satanism… when they were just performing selections from an opera and dressing the part.

But his animus toward Muslims is truly vile. As Kyle Mantyla notes:

Earlier this year, Indiana’s far-right Christian nationalist Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith caused outrage and generated controversy when he boasted that he was giving the residents of his state “permission to hate” the religion of Islam. Undaunted by the blowback, Beckwith steadfastly defended his statement and repeatedly doubled down on it, insisting that attacking Islam is “a political winner” for Republicans.

It just goes to show how Beckwith’s religion has taught him to be an asshole at every turn.

This is, after all, the guy who said the LGBTQ movement is operating out of a “demonic playbook,” that the infamous three-fifths compromise was “a good thing,” that his own election was a choice between “godly boldness” and “the Jezebel spirit,” that people who advocate for church/state separation are “the LGBTQ community trying to support Hamas,” that he would only allow exceptions to his state’s anti-abortion laws in the case of child rape victims as long as the rapist was murdered, and that Zohran Mamdani was wrongly trying to “force his values onto New York” by daring to be Muslim in a country that Beckwith falsely claims is founded on Christianity.

It’s possible to say you don’t agree with Islamic beliefs while stressing the need for religious freedom. But the MAGA crowd has decided to go all in on the idea that only one religion—their religion—matters. They get to bend the rules whenever it suits them, while the regular rules don’t apply to disfavored religions.

It’s the reason people like Beckwith should be condemned and rejected at the ballot box at every opportunity.

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In an act of ignorance so out-of-date, you’d think it happened two decades ago, Rod Joseph, an evangelical Christian U.S. House candidate from Florida, said in an interview that everyone is “born straight” and gay people choose to be gay because the alternative is “impossible biologically.”

Which is a hell of a thing to say when the district in which you’re campaigning—which includes Wilton Manors, Fort Lauderdale, and Oakland Park—is considered an LGBTQ hub for south Florida.

The comments came in response to a question asked by the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board on Tuesday about a recent tweet posted—and eventually deleted— by bigoted GOP Rep. Andy Ogles. He said, at the beginning of Pride Month, “Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month.” (Ogles, the sort of guy who would absolutely post something like that, quickly blamed an unnamed staffer for the tweet.)

The correct answer would have been to denounce the tweet and the sentiment underlying it, before adding how that kind of anti-LGBTQ hate has no place in society.

Joseph responded by saying he didn’t want to comment at all… before baring his entire ass and revealing his thoughts about LGBTQ people in general:

“You cannot be born gay. That’s impossible biologically,” he said.

Joseph said sexuality is a preference, not an inherent orientation. “Sexual preference from the Roman Empire to date, it’s always a preference.”

Joseph, in an interview Tuesday, also said he is concerned that people are somehow indoctrinated or influenced to become LGBTQ. “Most of the people, they’re victims of sexual abuse at the very young age.”

To support his view that individuals choose their sexual orientation, Joseph said people should “look at the natural habitat. You never see a lion that mate(s) with a male lion for life. You never see a giraffe, a male giraffe, that mate(s) with a giraffe…. Myself right now saying I am a giraffe, that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

He’s wrong about everything. People are born gay even if they don’t realize it until later in life. It has nothing to do with sexual abuse. And you absolutely do see male lions mating with each other. Same with male giraffes, as the Sun Sentinel explained:

A 2025 documentary, “Animal Pride: Nature’s Coming Out Story,” and a 2024 documentary, “Queer Planet,” reported there are, indeed, giraffes, lions and other animals that engage in same-sex behavior.

Elsewhere in the interview, Joseph added that he was anti-abortion, too, which explained why the former Democrat left the party years earlier. (He also ran for both U.S. House and Senate as a Democrat, most recently in 2024. He lost badly in both primaries. No wonder.) His website explains that “Rod believes in family values, guided by his faith as a committed Christian.” No word on how he would handle those family values if any of his children ever came out to him.

If this is supposed to catapult him to success in the upcoming Republican primary, I’m not sure it did him any favors. The other GOP candidates gave equally bigoted answers without using the same language. One just said “I don’t know how God made people” while both that one and a third candidate said they disagreed with what Joseph said. (Which doesn’t mean they support LGBTQ rights at all.)

If there’s any consolation here, it’s that Florida has already gerrymandered the maps in the state, and this happens to be one of the few overwhelmingly blue districts left. The Democrat on the ballot is all-but-assured a victory. That’s probably why the GOP candidates are so bad at this; the stronger Republican politicians know better than to jump into this race. Which means the bulk of their party’s nominees are the sorts of crazies who are repellent ideologues who just want to use this campaign as a launching pad for their next careers.

Joseph must have seen the backlash to the interview, though, because on Wednesday, he responded on Facebook with a message that doubles down on his bigotry while pretending he completely cares about LGBTQ people:

My faith teaches me that every person is made in God’s image and deserves to be treated with dignity and respect — no exceptions. In interviews, I speak from that same faith when I talk about my personal beliefs on marriage and family. I understand not everyone shares my religious convictions, and I respect that.

What I will always fight for as your Congressman is equal protection under the law, safety, and opportunity for every resident of District 20 — regardless of who they are. That’s the job.

That’s the promise.

The fact that he didn’t get specific about how he’s protect LGBTQ rights tells you he doesn’t want to protect them at all. Plus, you can’t treat people with dignity and respect when you’re denying a vital part of who they are.

The issue here isn’t just that Joseph is wrong about gay people; he’s wrong about them in a way that even conservative evangelical churches have fixed over the years. They’ll freely admit people are gay; they just urge them never to act on it. But if Joseph is perpetuating lies that peaked decades ago, it suggests he’s incapable of getting good information on topics that would matter to his own constituents. He’s too intellectually lazy and morally bankrupt to know better.

I have no clue if he’ll fare well in the Republican primary, but it’s clear he doesn’t think his bigotry will hurt him. That’s probably accurate. Spreading anti-LGBTQ hate is par for the course at this point, and anyone who votes for Republicans at any level is complicit in the harm caused by the party.

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A Christian influencer is going viral for all the wrong reasons after posting videos featuring her children with captions celebrating how they’re all white.

Captions like “Had 6 kids in 7 years to help the white race from going extinct” and “Let’s bring back large white, Christian families!”

While those videos are more recent, “Lady Sarah Elizabeth” (a.k.a ladysarahelizabeth06 on Instagram and ladysarahelizabeth on TikTok) has been posting content like this for a while now, using her kids as social media props. None of this is a recent change in character. She’s represents the sort of right-wing, Elon Musk-pilled, Charlie Kirk-loving, Great Replacement Theory-accepting, anti-immigration racist Christian that’s taken hold in the Republican Party.

Which makes plenty of sense when you realize that she and her husband—a man who, in case you haven’t guessed, is also white—rallied for Donald Trump before the 2024 elections:

At the time, NBC News described the pre-rally prayer he delivered:

At a December rally in Coralville, Iowa, the Rev. Joel Tenney spoke ahead of Trump, telling the several hundred supporters gathered that he wanted to talk to them “as a pastor.”

“We have witnessed a sitting president weaponize the entire legal system to try and steal an election and imprison his leading opponent, Donald Trump, despite committing no crime,” he said.

“We must re-elect President Trump for the third time,” Tenney said, echoing Trump’s “big lie” rhetoric. He then said that the upcoming election “is part of a spiritual battle” with “demonic forces at play.”

His voice trembling at times like a tent revival preacher behind a Trump-emblazoned podium, he continued: “When Donald Trump becomes the 47th President of the United States, there will be retribution against all those who have promoted evil in this country.”

(Joel Tenney runs a solo ministry, Alpha Pneuma Ministries.)

But back to his racist wife, Sarah Elizabeth Tenney.

Besides the I-hate-birth-control Christian fundamentalism of it all, she’s gone all in on the idea that what the world needs right now is more white people to undo the damage of non-white people and (gasp) mixed-race families. After all, she says, white people deserve credit for “bringing us all into modernity, and inventing, all modern technology.” (Punctuation unchanged.)

According to a website dedicated to covering extremism:

Tenney frequently frames having a large white family as both a religious calling and a racial imperative. In March, Tenney posted a video of her and her husband overlaid with the words “POV: You know your race is a minority race and need to bring it back to its former glory so you have six kids.” Another post from February featured a video of her family overlaid with the words “Christians let’s start trusting God and grow our families. The Muslim and other religions are having large families and openly say they are going to out breed us. God’s 1st commandment, ‘be fruitful and multiply.’”

… Among the many influencers posting this racist content, Sarah is the most popular and has the most powerful connections.

This is why, whenever we talk about the scourge of Christian Nationalism, it’s important to stress how this is white Christian Nationalism. There’s a hell of a lot of overlap between the people who believe we ought to live in a country ruled by their religious beliefs and those who think white people are superior to everyone else. They go to church. They work for this Republican administration. They are welcome in both spaces. And the people who are in their orbit, even if they’re not outwardly racist in the same way, are just as guilty of perpetuating this ideology.

In Tenney’s case, she just creates straw men, left and right, to justify her bigotry.

She claims people want her to have abortions (they don’t), or that they’re offended by her kids (why?), or that everyone believes she’s promiscuous (no one would care). She’s one of those people who believes everyone else’s world revolves entirely around her existence, and she responds by pretending to be a voice of reason when what she’s actually doing is proving her own inferiority.

Also, if you’re constantly bragging that the only reason you have children is to perpetuate your race, you’re telling on yourself. As if every child is conceived purely out of spite—to stick it to some imaginary internet strangers.

Speaking of which, kudos to this internet stranger:

The conservative racism of the Iowa-based, Armenia-living couple has real-life implications, too. This isn’t just online rhetoric. What Stephen Miller says on behalf of Trump is no different from the hate speech spewed by these people. But this is what passes as inspirational content in certain conservative Christian circles. Some of them use phrases like “family values,” “demographic change,” or “protecting Western civilization.” The Tenneys don’t even bother with euphemisms because they know their audience. Why hide the white supremacy when you can just toss in a few Bible verses and know your viewers will assume you’re holy?

This also isn’t anything new. Christianity has always been used to justify slavery and segregation. Yes, there have always been Christians who oppose those things, but you can’t deny the role religion played in propping up the idea of a God-ordained racial hierarchy. That’s why white Christian Nationalism remains such a dangerous force in American politics. It’s not just about putting prayer in schools or posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. These people want to define what America looks like, theologically and literally. It’s how they can convince their base that every election represents an existential threat to their way of life because everyone who doesn’t look or think like them—a Muslim mayor, a Democratic Socialist congresswoman, a Jewish city council member—must be an enemy. Which is why you need to breed an army of white Christian soldiers… who can be used to boost your social media pages until they’re old enough to enlist.

The saddest thing here may be that their kids are now wrapped up in their parents’ overt racism. They’ll grow up knowing they were never the product of love but an extension of their parents’ hatred. It’s the least “pro-life” argument you can imagine.

If this is what passes for family values in certain corners of the right, then more conservative Christians should speak out against it or it’s safe to assume they’re fine with it.