Introduction

Now in its sixth edition, our annual State of the Secular States report has tracked the trend of escalating state-level attacks on religious equality across the years. Worryingly, many of the most grave threats to civil rights protections for LGBTQ people, access to abortion care, and basic democratic norms that we’ve raised the alarm about have come to pass — often with the explicit endorsement of the Supreme Court, national political leaders, and a network of well-funded Christian nationalist advocacy groups.

These attacks on vulnerable communities, and on democracy itself, have gone from relatively rare outbursts of extremism to the centerpiece of a political movement. Some of the issues at play here, specifically those that focus on LGBTQ people, have come to dominate discourse among right-wing commentators and occupy an outsized place in even mainstream political coverage. This obsessive focus on a small and vulnerable minority has all the hallmarks of a moral panic.

State legislators, emboldened and enabled by astroturfed activists, have sought to enact bans not just on surgical or medical treatment for trans young people, but even bans on social transition or counseling. They have, using overly broad and unworkably vague laws, tried to ban drag performances — including those where someone simply reads books or otherwise “performs” in public. Lawmakers have empowered extremists from across the country to demand the removal of books from public and school libraries, lest the staff be held civilly or even criminally liable. A report from The Washington Post found that the majority of the thousands of challenges to books in school libraries came from just 11 people.

The deep irony of many of these laws is that their advocates often speak about so-called “parental rights” to justify their actions. Just as white Christian nationalists use the smokescreen of “religious freedom” to hide their true goals — reinforcing the privileged position of one particular form of Christianity above all other religions — this slogan sounds unobjectionable on its face, but the policies advanced in its name usurp the rights of parents, and young people, to make decisions for themselves without government intrusion.

And, as we predicted in last year’s edition of this report, attacks on reproductive health care access — not limited to just abortion, but also access to birth control, attempts to silence discussion about abortion, and even criminal penalties for women traveling out of state to access abortion care — have intensified.

Like white Christian nationalist ideology itself, the effects of this extremism on communities are overwhelmingly unpopular with the majority of Americans. Their actions are only possible because of the anti-democratic policies enacted by politicians aligned to this movement. For example, lawmakers in some states have engaged in extreme gerrymandering, or manipulating electoral districts in order to skew outcomes and protect extreme politicians, removed power from elected governors or attorneys general of the opposite party, placed onerous restrictions on voting such as limiting polling places in cities, and even assumed direct control over how elections take place, potentially giving legislatures greater control to throw out results they don’t like. While it is true that some of the worst and most egregious actions have been blocked by lower courts, appellate courts seem to be willing to allow clearly antidemocratic and discriminatory laws to take effect, putting the health and welfare of vulnerable people at risk. This is particularly true for those circuit courts that were stacked with extremist judges by the Trump Administration.

We cannot sugarcoat this: the circumstances are dire for people living in states with heavily gerrymandered legislatures that have enacted many of these laws. The stories of women forced to continue non-viable pregnancies because of draconian restrictions on abortion care are horrifying. The mental and physical toll that anti-LGBTQ policies take on members of that community, particularly trans youth and their families, is difficult to overstate. And the dehumanizing rhetoric from the white Christian nationalist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion movement has led to numerous examples of bomb threats and calls to violence against hospitals, schools, libraries, and businesses.

There are opportunities for our movement to make significant progress and enact policies that protect the health and wellbeing of all Americans. From laws guaranteeing access to secular addiction recovery programs to banning the practice of child marriage and requiring greater transparency regarding religious refusals of health care, these commonsense laws protect vulnerable people from religiously motivated harms and improve quality of life in states that enact them.

As we enter into another election year, we hope members of our community will pay close attention to where politicians stand on these issues and cast their votes accordingly.