Most legal scholars agree that states have no right to secede, but could a philosophically united (if geographically scattered) group secede in all but name? In a Wednesday piece for Talking Points Memo, Ed Kilgore speculated that religious conservatives, discouraged by developments such as the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage, might seek to create within the U.S. “a parallel society in which the painful diversity of contemporary life, and its disturbing clatter of demands for ‘equality’ and ‘non-discrimination’ and ‘rights’…is simply excluded, along with ‘government schools’ and secular news and entertainment.”
Kilgore noted that the business and financial interests that control the GOP don’t want the Christian right to withdraw from mainstream politics: “Republicans want religious conservatives mobilized and angry, but not too demanding…After all, there are tax rates to be lowered, entitlements to be ‘reformed,’ regulations to be abolished, and profits to be made.”
From Kilgore’s piece (emphasis added):
[For conservatives, claims of] “religious liberty” [are] even more effective than opposing “judicial activism,” because it borrows the aura of an almost universally valued American principle. And it’s less aggressively theocratic, as well, insofar as its proponents do not (at least in this context) propose to ban same-sex marriage (or to ban abortions or contraceptives), but simply to create a zone in which gay marriages don’t have to be recognized (and abortions and contraceptives provided or subsidized).
…[A]s the “religious liberty” movement continues to develop, you could see it morph into the theoretical foundation for a parallel society in which the painful diversity of contemporary life, and its disturbing clatter of demands for “equality” and “non-discrimination” and “rights” (other than religious rights and the Right To Life, of course) is simply excluded, along with “government schools” and secular news and entertainment.
Presumably the Republican Party could thrive as the exclusive political champion of this parallel society — the One Party for the One-Party-State of conservative conformity operating at the margins of the heathenish remainder of the country. There are sunbelt suburbs, in fact, where this is pretty much already a reality. But there’s danger in too much reliance on liberating conservatives from “judicial activism” via an ever-expanding zone of “religious liberty:” opponents of same-sex marriage and abortion/contraception could become complacent and lose the spiritual muscle-tone provided by fighting to restore godly norms for all Americans…
Republicans want religious conservatives mobilized and angry, but not too demanding or overtly threatening. After all, there are tax rates to be lowered, entitlements to be “reformed,” regulations to be abolished, and profits to be made.
