So Called Religious Freedom Group Wants to End Your Freedom

They Know Best, You Don't

It is impossible to deny that throughout history many religious orders have as their main mission the imposition of their beliefs on non-believers. The Founders recognized this and put Freedom of Religion first in the Bill of Rights. But that doesn't stop some from trying to subvert it.

The First Amendment has become the most powerful weapon of social conservatives fighting to limit the separation of church and state and to roll back laws on same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

Few groups have done more to advance this body of legal thinking than the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has more than 3,000 lawyers working on behalf of its causes around the world and brought in $51.5 million in revenue for the 2015-16 tax year, more than the American Civil Liberties Union.

Huh? How can a constitutional right to practice religion be used to force religion on those who do not subscribe? Easy, use the bigot friendly courts.

Among the alliance’s successes has been bringing cases involving relatively minor disputes to the Supreme Court — a law limiting the size of church signs, a church seeking funding for a playground — and winning rulings that establish major constitutional precedents.

And so the Supreme Court will hear cases that if decided in favor of those who would coerce the rest of us into accepting their prejudice and hatred will destroy much of religious freedom in the nation. What, they are not haters? Well there is this.

“They’ve got some very big, very clear goals,” said Mr. Montgomery, who has studied Alliance Defending Freedom since the group’s founding in 1994.

One of those goals was to defend laws that criminalized gay and lesbian sexual conduct.

In a brief the alliance filed urging the Supreme Court not to overturn a Texas law that made homosexual activity illegal, its lawyers described gay men as diseased and as public health risks. The court decided 6 to 3 that the law was unconstitutional.