I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to chime in with this or not, but I honestly believe it’s an important piece of context to understand this story.

I want to be clear that this is in no manner an endorsement or support of this group’s beliefs. I’m just trying to provide a truthful picture for everyone.

I had a family member who was a prominent lawyer for a group very similar to the one in the article. He was a very religious man who pursued legal challenges to “anti-Christian” legislations in court.

I was... not particularly fond of this family member, to say the least.

But. But. I think people may be forming a slightly skewed idea of what this story is about, and what the goals of this group are.

From my experience, Christian crusaders such as these individuals are very concerned about precedent.

Remember (maybe some of you are too young) one of the classic arguments against gay marriage?

If the gays can marry, who/what is next?

These groups, just having known some members of them, are extremely worried about legislation being drafted providing “common sense” protections or “rights”, that can then be used as precedent in less extreme cases.

Just freeballing off the top of my head, but I’ll create a random example:

Imagine there’s a federal law that grants hiring protections to all members of a “federally protected minority groups”.

Then there comes along a law that makes it an automatic federal crime to assault people who wear green pants.

Now, because green pants wearers are a federally protected minority group, the hiring protections under the civil rights law passed earlier would make it illegal to not hire someone because they came to the interview in outrageous green attire.

(I’m not trying to make this example accurate. I’m not saying the law works exactly like this. I’m just trying to provide a super simple example kind of showing why these people seem to be opposing something so simple)

All that being said, I’m not against people with alternative sexual identities or genders getting federal protections.

I just think zealots trying to prevent precedent from being set, while still very bad, is different than the implication, that these groups want to be able to legally lynch trans individuals or something.