It's obvious why we were passing religious liberty laws. This sort of commentary and "news" created a mind-bending experience to those of us not on the Left. Why are so many lawmakers passing these laws? Is this some new assault on gays? Last decade, the media worried about the flood of religious liberty laws. America's Left, in the past decade, has launched an unprecedented culture war offensive, and the Right has to play defense or, on occasion, launch counteroffensives. And since February, Ukrainians have been sinking Russian ships, shooting down Russian fighter jets, and killing Russian soldiers. It’s just as apt to say the Ukrainians got much more aggressive in the past 10 years, because look at how they built up their military. The second response is to point out how lots of Republicans and conservatives are fighting culture wars more aggressively these days, to which my colleague Tiana Lowe says good. So that’s not an argument to which anyone should pay attention. Second, it ignores how deeply steeped in conspiracy theories the Left is. First of all, this argument has nothing to do with ideology or policy - it is just liberals equating “Right” with anything bad. One is to point to former President Donald Trump, how obnoxious and uncouth he is, or to conspiracy theories taking hold on the Right. There are three common liberal responses that are more substantive but still wrong. Predictably, we got the “ data journalism” that “proves” that really, the Right went extreme and liberals are just imitating the Left. World’s richest man Elon Musk triggered the debate again these days with a tweet. Yet still, you find liberals, including journalists, who say with a straight face that polarization in America is about liberals staying put and conservatives going far-right. On the social issues, then, conservatives and the GOP have moved slightly left, and liberals have moved hard-left. Today, the Democratic Party drives out any pro-lifers, declares them to be the equivalent of segregationists, persecutes anyone who won't participate in a gay wedding, and tries to teach gender ideology, as a fact of life, in public schools. And, again, Democrats weren’t really talking about gender fluidity, deadnaming, cisgender normativity, pronoun violations, or housing male violent criminals in female prisons. They were split on gay marriage, with the party establishment taking the conservative position. Also, they at least tolerated pro-life Democrats back then.
What did Democrats and liberals believe in 2000? They were already pretty dedicated to abortion on demand without apology, sure, but they accepted a compromise of no taxpayer funding. On gender, this wasn’t even an issue 22 years ago, because nobody was trying to claim either that gender was infinitely fluid or that boys who felt deep down like girls should be treated as girls. On abortion, Republicans are about in the same place.
Many Republican lawmakers and governors embrace gay marriage.