Peter Montgomery vs. Claims that Religious Right Is Waning in American Politics: The "Religious Freedom" Debate

Peter Montgomery lists five reasons to demonstrate that it's wildly wrong to claim that the influence of the religious right has waned in American politics.  The first of these: the attempt of the religious right (including the U.S. Catholic bishops and their supporters) to redefine the term "religious liberty" or "religious freedom," so that it permits special privileges to religious groups to disobey non-discrimination laws applying to everyone else.

Montgomery writes: 

Kazin* does not address church-state separation or efforts by the Religious Right and its allies, particularly the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, to redefine religious liberty. In the name of “religious liberty,” they demand religious exemptions from generally applicable laws, but only for their religious beliefs; take government funding for religiously based programs but cry discrimination when a government grant program has anti-discrimination policies incompatible with their religious beliefs; portray those who oppose government funding of religion as anti-religious bigots and and claim oppression when government officials are made to comply with the separation of church and state.   

Under President George W. Bush, Religious Right leaders’ political support was rewarded with weakened legal protections against tax dollars being used to fund religious discrimination and proselytizing, troubling changes that have yet to be fully reversed by the Obama administration. A phalanx of conservative Christian legal organizations fights daily to weaken the legal separation of church and state, and to reverse restrictions on overt electoral activity by tax-exempt churches.  

And this explains, of course, why the U.S. Catholic bishops have done everything in their power to undermine the current Democratic administration from the outset of the administration.  In their world, Republicans = special exemptions and privileges (to discriminate).

For the Democrats, less so, the bishops think.

*Montgomery is responding to an article by Michael Kazin in New Republic which claims religious right influence is declining in American politics.

The graphic is His Excellency Bishop Lori, head of the new "religious freedom" initiative of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops speaking to Fox news viewers in November about how the Obama administration is attacking Catholics' religious freedom.