A very bad day for the Right

On Monday, June 15, the American social conservatives suffered multiple, massive blows, and a near knockout sucker punch by the hands of their own chosen champion, Neil Gorsuch. They are in a state of severe concussion now.

The American Supreme court made the 6-3 decision that firing employees on the basis of their sexual orientation is against the law. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, in which he justified the decision on the grounds that discrimination over sexual orientation is implicit sex discrimination, which is illegal since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In plain English, if a woman can't be fired for an act, then a man can't be either for doing the same. E.g. bringing a boyfriend to a company party. As the sole difference between these two cases were the sex of the subject, this would be sexual discrimination.

That the social conservatives are enraged is an understatement. Trump himself briefly mentioned the decision, then moved on. For all his faults, he is not a bigot or a homophobe - and for once, in one aspect, he appears to be a better human being than his voters. Religious pundits, on the other hand, even those who hate Trump with a passion, are through the roof. In their fevered mind, the nihilistic secularist has launched another merciless attack against religious liberty. That is, one's liberty to fire her employees for their sexual orientation based on religious beliefs. The Supreme Court's decision explicitly exempts religious institutions from the rule, but when tyranny starts to stretch out, eventually it creeps into everything.

I think I fail to be sarcastic enough.

On the other hand, I really try to find a less damning reading of their reaction. If I were a devout Christian who took the Bible close to literally, I'd find homosexuality abhorrent. The scripture is explicit about this. Many of these peoples are not morons. They just have a belief system the rest of the world left behind. So for them, this is as bad as it is important. But appealing to religious liberty? To constrain other people's liberty? On what grounds would they then condemn the discrimination against blacks in the Mormon Church before 1978?

This is one of those moral questions that have two possible answers: a very simple or a very complicated one.

One thing is sure, though. The hammer came down on the "but Gorsuch"-argument with a thunder.