The First Amendment to the Constitution is rightfully viewed as having a profound influence in shaping modern America. Particularly, the First Amendment has shaped our country’s status as a haven for those persecuted and oppressed on the basis of their religion and faith. But as society has become increasingly secularized, politicians and certain interest groups have systemically sought to disenfranchise the religious in our nation from freely practicing their faith in the name of “equal rights.” And because the amount of credence we give to the views of these so-called “egalitarians” has proliferated in recent years, we have, in turn, thumbed our noses at religious communities across our nation that still have viable, legitimate voices in our society.

In the newest instance of tolerant tyranny, the city of Houston recently passed a gender-neutral bathroom bill that institutionalizes unisex bathrooms in the city to accommodate for transgender people—a bill that encountered strong criticism from Houston’s Christian community. In fact, that community, distraught by the perception that the city was approving and endorsing a lifestyle not compatible with biblical teachings, mobilized a petition movement this past election cycle to try repealing it through a vote by the city’s populace. 

City officials fired back, ruling that the petition drive was inadequate because many of the signatures had been scrutinized and deemed illegitimate. Houston pastors and the religious community responded by filing a suit against the city, claiming that they had garnered three times the minimum number required to place the ordinance on the ballot. This is where the problems begin. 

Houston Mayor Annise Parker, in a shocking display of authoritarianism, started an operation to target and subpoena five separate pastors as an answer to the suit. The subpoenas, according to the Washington Times, called for communications related to the “mayor, the ordinance, homosexuality and gender neutrality.”  The city of Houston was coercing the pastors into handing over the contents of their most common means of relevant communication: prayers and sermons—a chilling effect indeed.

While Ms. Parker has since backed off and withdrawn the ongoing subpoenas because of the immense public backlash and has rewritten them to exclusively address the petition in question (effectively placing the petition in bureaucratic limbo for now), an unambiguous fact remains: religious liberty in the United States has come under direct attack by leftists in governments across the country. And this incident in Houston is not, by any means, their first offense. 

The movement to repress and censor religiosity has festered in America for quite some time. Indeed, one of the largest “freethinker” and atheist groups, Freedom from Religion, has incomprehensively achieved serious clout in the battle over religious liberty in the public sphere. One of the most disgraceful controversies surrounding the organization occurred when the group bullied a New Hampshire mother, Lizarda Urena, out of praying on the front steps of Concord High School. This was based on the fallacious notion that even a modicum of prayer or religiosity in the public domain is a violation of the establishment clause in the First Amendment, whereas this was actually a blatant violation of Urena’s individual right to freedom of religion and expression. In the words of Concord High School Principal Gene Conolly, “She’s not teaching prayer; she’s not out there asking kids to come with (her) … she does not promote religion.”

Freedom from Religion’s damaging influence in cases like Urena’s, as well as the actions of Ms. Parker and others, has led to a progression in all parts of the country where religious communities are under threat of repression in a cornucopia of ways. In Colorado, Christian students at Pine Creek High School, during their free time in school, can now “no longer meet to pray, sing religious songs or discuss religious topics during free time,” as per a report by Fox News. This is because of a perceived violation of the separation of church and state. 

Meanwhile, in Oregon, Aaron and Melissa Klein, devout Christian bakers, refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple because it was in violation of their religious beliefs. 

They were fined $150,000 by the state as a result, based on anti-discriminatory law applied to the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Queer community—a fine that could potentially bankrupt them. These and other cases share a troubling connection of targeting private, religious citizens.

Liberals, who once championed the Bill of Rights in its entirety, have since abandoned these founding principles in favor of an antireligious strain of bullying that holds people’s religious beliefs and livelihoods hostage in the name of a morally bankrupt version of tolerance. When discussing the liberal version of separation of church and state, leftists employ a glaring cognitive dissonance on the matter. They claim to be strong defenders of keeping religion out of the state—even going as far as to crusade against the most minor “offenses,” namely, personal adherence to religious practices in public spaces. Yet, they are noticeably disinterested in and, in some cases, even supportive of and complicit in using the power of the state to regulate, surveil and harass private religious citizens. How is it a public danger if private businesspeople follow their religious practices in their private businesses? Where is the consistency?

It appears, in the minds of liberals, that law-abiding citizens should lose their right to freely exercise their First Amendment rights just because they start a business, step outside their homes or say the “wrong” thing. 

This assumption that has taken hold in our society must be finally put to rest for the sake of salvaging what’s left of our once-vibrant fidelity for religious liberty.

America is quickly approaching a point where the religious in our society are subservient to the whims and desires of the secular mob. The question remains:w can this increasingly sustained push to forcibly secularize American society through thuggish tactics actually achieve long lasting success? God forbid.