Attitude depends a lot on whose ox is gored.
Is your concern attitudes or power? Possibly empowering your opponents by convincing them, and more importantly (since they might be already convinced and in any case are apparently already enemies) the marginal potential new opponent, that the theories of war on religion are valid, doesn't seem productive.
but I don't see how what was in place just a few years ago can be dismissed so cavalierly as unlikely.
When was the last time that religious conservatives have been able to impose a major new restriction, or even restore a previous one, along those lines. Probably before I was born. Every battle about a conservative religious imposition has been about whether an existing one will be allowed to stay in place, or whether it will be removed. Nothing is going the other way, and they rarely, perhaps almost never, get victories over real impositions. Instead of imposing public school lead prayer, or outlawing contraception, the battles they have any hope of winning are over things like "In God We Trust" on money, having military chaplains, or having Moses displayed at the supreme court in the context of also having other historical "lawgivers" like Hammurabi, Solomon, Octavian, Charlemagne, Confucius and Solon (rather different than the display in Roy Moore's courtroom). If those are impositions, they are extremely mild compared to the current attempt to force contraception coverage, and even for those its a defensive battle, where the issue is the battle over whether to keep the status quo, or move in a more liberal direction. |
