In an article posted online before Monday's
Hobby Lobby ruling, BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins
takes a look at how Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has tried to rebrand social conservatism as a battle for religious freedom, including this quote from Jindal:
I think it’s a very dangerous place if we go from being a society that was founded because of religious liberty, to a place where we become so intolerant of those who disagree with us that we try to either silence their views, or we try limit their views to where you can only have them for an hour on Sunday.
As Coppins says, Jindal's rhetoric is an effort to change the debate from one focused on the unpopular substance of socially conservative public policy—a debate his side will lose—into a debate about whether conservative views ought to be tolerated, a debate that he thinks is easier to win. Jindal, again:
My hope is that there may even be folks who disagree with me on the definition of marriage, or may disagree with me on some of the more traditional social issues, but will say it’s important in America that we stand for religious liberty.
And, according to Jindal, Hobby Lobby is exhibit number one of how the Obama White House "is an administration that has taken on religious liberties throughout our society." You can't blame Jindal for trying—after all, it's a lot easier to defend liberty than to defend abortion bans or allowing employers to interfere with personal medical decisions—but the Supreme Court's
Hobby Lobby ruling exposes Jindal's rhetoric as the bamboozling spin that it is, because in order to justify its decision, the court decided to declare Hobby Lobby—a chain with billions in revenue and more than 23,000 employees—was in fact a person.
Far from defending religious liberty, the ruling, and those who sought it, twisted religious liberty into a weapon designed to restrict the freedom of women—who, unlike Hobby Lobby, actually are people—to make their own medical decisions. And that means the next time Jindal and other conservatives talk about religious liberty, it will be clear for all to see that they are pushing for the exact same stuff they've been pushing for all along, just with different words.