rear·guard
ˈri(ə)rˌgärd
noun
the soldiers positioned at the rear of a body of troops, especially those protecting an army when it is in retreat.
While I don't agree 100 percent with
this piece, I do buy this part:
Where once the religious right sought to inject a unified ideology of traditionalist Judeo-Christianity into the nation's politics, now it seeks merely to protect itself against a newly aggressive form of secular social liberalism.
In other words,
Hobby Lobby isn't the mark of a Religious Right movement on the offensive, it's one that is trying to carve out exemptions as popular culture and American public opinion grind it to irrelevancy.
The only reason Hobby Lobby even exists as an issue is because of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, an imperfect but important progressive victory. Hobby Lobby doesn't seek to impose its will on America, it seeks to protect itself from the American mainstream.
On gay marriage, on pop culture, on abortion, the religious right has all but acknowledged it is a fringe ideology. It couldn't even get personhood amendment passed in Mississippi! Its agenda is now about carve-outs, preserving its own rights to discriminate and deny slut pills to its own employees and to hell with the American majority.
Yes, the Hobby Lobby decision was in part a minor victory for social conservatives. But it was one half-step forward after more than a dozen consecutive steps back.
The religious right, as a coherent national movement, is dying fast. Liberals need to start thinking and acting like the victors they are instead of like the victims they once justly considered themselves to be.
The religious right won't die on its own, and it has powerful allies on the Supreme Court and state legislatures. But every time each and every one of us votes against its interests at the ballot box, we kill it just a little bit more.
The electoral math is clear. Women have the numbers to make this happen this November. All they have to do is vote. And we win enough of those votes, those allies in state houses and legislatures and the Supreme Court will go bye bye. And then they have nothing left.