The second, more difficult category for Project Blitz consists of bills intended to promote the teaching and celebration of Christianity in public schools and elsewhere. These bills are a means of spreading the message that Christian conservatives are the real Americans, and everybody else is here by invitation only.
.. The sponsors of Project Blitz have pinned their deepest hopes on the third and most contentious category of model legislation. The dream here is something that participants in the conference call referred to in awed tones as “the Mississippi missile.” The “missile” in question is Mississippi’s HB 1523, a 2016 law that allows private businesses and government employees to discriminate, against L.G.B.T. people for example, provided that they do so in accordance with “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
The bill offers extraordinary protections, not to all religious beliefs per se, but to a very narrow set of beliefs associated mostly with conservative religion.
.. The bill claims that people in same-sex relationships have a “higher instance of serious disease.”
.. their concern here, according to the guidebook, is that all of this gay sex is costing taxpayers lots of money — “estimated to be in the billions of dollars annually,” according to the bill template.
.. demeaning whole groups of people in society is really just a means to an end. The aim is political power. In their language, it’s sometimes called “dominion” — meaning, specifically, the domination by those with the correct “biblical” worldview over all aspects of politics, culture and society.
.. David Barton is the founder of WallBuilders, an organization that promotes the view that America is a nation of, by and for Christians of a very specific variety.
.. Buddy Pilgrim, another member of the Project Blitz steering team
.. According to Mr. Pilgrim’s website, “Dominion in earthly realms of authority (business & politics) is a biblical mandate.”
.. Bill Dallas, a convicted embezzler who later founded United in Purpose, a data-collection operation that aims, among other things, to increase turnout of conservative evangelical voters in local, state and national elections.
.. This is a very upbeat crowd. “We have this window of opportunity now; I think we’re all feeling it
.. you don’t need a majority to hijack a modern democracy. You just need a sizable minority, marinating in its grievances, willing to act as a bloc, and impervious to correction by fact or argument. Make this group feel good about itself by making other people feel bad about themselves, and dominion may well be in reach.
.. Religion, as most Americans understand it, has something to do with care of the soul — not ramming bills through gerrymandered legislatures. And faith has something to do with showing love for other people, not writing contempt for them into the law.