Thursday’s final passage of the Respect for Marriage Act reveals a small but important fissure in the Republican Party’s long alliance with the Christian right. The GOP backers — 39 in the House and 12 in the Senate — recognize that nearly three-quarters of Americans support marriage equality, and only a narrow minority, primarily white evangelicals, opposes it. These 51 Republicans (though still less than a quarter of the caucus) rejected false and apocalyptic claims by influential Christian right leaders that the bill would abandon religious Americans to a “woke” agenda and eviscerate their religious freedom — claims they persisted in making even after senators added expansive religious liberty protections based on their demands.
Republican backers of the Respect for Marriage Act have been in the Christian right’s crosshairs since its initial passage in the House this summer. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, one of the Christian right’s most influential political organizations, called it the “Disrespect for Marriage Act” and charged that the Republicans supporting it had “caved to the Left’s pressure.” The FRC’s political arm, FRC Action — along with other right-wing advocacy groups like the Heritage Foundation, Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee and the American Family Association — then turned to pressuring Senate Republicans. The AFA claimed, for example, that religious nonprofits could be subject to lawsuits and...
Over the last year, beyond traditional healthcare and federal procurement matters, the government has pursued federal False Claims Act (FCA) investigations and enforcement across high-risk areas, ...