There is a clash of civilizations under way in the United States and it's making many previous culture wars look like polite skirmishes. The battle lines pit the same coastal elites, rich liberals and once-reluctant Democrats against vast pockets of the Christian conservative resistance inland and opportunistic Republicans who pander to this shrinking but still king-making electorate.
This is why Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act has generated a national screaming match. The American gay-rights movement has been emboldened by a string of court victories; it's been enriched by billionaire donors bankrolling its legal and lobbying fights; it's energized by celebrities and CEOs who've taken up the cause. But for every victory the movement noisily flaunts, there is an equal and opposite reaction on the right.
And make no mistake. The right's lock on American legislatures is not loosening any time soon. The Democratic Party's courting of geographically concentrated racial minorities and its dominance by pro-redistribution liberals have driven white voters in the most of the rest of the country into the arms of the GOP. Blue-collar whites once formed the Democratic base; they now vote solidly Republican. So do white men of all incomes.
That support translates into seats. After sweeping last fall's elections, Republicans now hold 69 of 99 state legislative chambers – more than at any time since 1900. The GOP also holds 32 of 50 governorships, although the party's seat count is so high that, in many states, it has more than enough votes to override any governor who refuses to back its agenda.
That agenda includes an aggressive counteroffensive against gay marriage. The RFRA law that overwhelmingly passed the Indiana state legislature last month was a direct response to a federal appeals court ruling last September that struck down the state's ban on same-sex unions. Governor Mike Pence's initial claims that his state's RFRA would not give businesses a "licence to discriminate" against gays – for instance, by allowing a bakery to refuse to cater a same-sex wedding – were belied by anti-gay-marriage activists who pushed for the law for that very reason.
Indeed, specific language in the Indiana law acknowledging the religious rights of private businesses distinguished it from similar laws in 19 other states and at the federal level. And while other states with RFRAs also have anti-discrimination laws that designate LGBT individuals as a protected class of citizens, Indiana does not. Hence, the Twitter-mastering marriage equality movement predicted the ugliest possible scenarios and mobilized the liberal masses in defiance.
Leading Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton, who opposed gay marriage until 2013, called Indiana's law "sad" and tweeted: "We shouldn't discriminate against ppl bc of who they love." Apple CEO Tim Cook, who movingly came out last fall, said Indiana's RFRA reminded him of "Whites only" signs once posted on shop doors in his native South. "We must never return to any semblance of that time," he insisted. Singer Miley Cyrus used saltier language to describe Mr. Pence.
Indiana suddenly faced more sanctions than Iran. Apple was joined by a slew of big-name corporations who denounced the law and/or threatened to cut off investment in Indiana. A few Democratic governors banned publicly funded travel to the Hoosier State. On Tuesday, Mr. Pence sought to end the controversy by promising new legislation by week's end that would explicitly prevent businesses from invoking the RFRA to deny services to gays.
But judging by the way the Arkansas legislature rejected including such a measure in its own RFRA, and by the way Republican presidential contenders lined up to defend the original Indiana law, this is a culture war that serves the crass purposes of a party that invented modern wedge politics.
The controversy is also a gift to Democrats. Just a few years ago, same-sex marriage seemed like a lost cause south of the border. Even Californians voted to ban it, for heaven's sake. A majority of states had similar bans. Now, only a few remain and the U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide whether they can stay. Public opinion has swung sharply in favour of allowing gay marriage.
Democrats who once feared alienating mainstream voters by embracing marriage equality now feed off the movement's activism to mobilize the party's base. No wonder Ms. Clinton's thumbs got busy.
But if the ultimate winner seems obvious – the arc of history bends towards equality, and the Democrats – plenty more nasty iterations will play out before this clash of civilizations is over.
Konrad Yakabuski