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In the days since Monday’s decision, conservative groups have sprung into action, using the court’s decision to mobilize evangelical voters for the midterm elections and double down on electing Republican candidates who would continue to fight gay marriage.“This continues to be an issue that drives voters,” said Ralph Reed, a veteran evangelical strategist who heads the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “We’ve got it on every digital ad, on every voter guide… We’ve visited 137,000 churches in 27 states, and at each one, we’re telling them to care about gay marriage, to look at where the candidates stand on this issue.”For Republican candidates—including (and perhaps especially) those running for president in 2016—“there will be no avoiding this issue,” he said.Like most of the conservative leaders I spoke to, Reed is still not sure what kind of legislative or political avenues the Christian right will pursue to get around the federal marriage ruling. But he predicted that the lower court decisions to overturn state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage would spark a backlash among conservatives that would be “the marriage equivalent of the pro-life movement.”“People voted on this issue—it is state constitutions that are being struck down,” Reed said. “I don’t think there is any way that you can redefine marriage for all 50 states without facing backlash.”
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In a sign of the fundamental divides in the GOP, religious conservatives have actually made the opposite argument, warning that the party will lose elections if it abandons its conservative base by giving up on the marriage fight.
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Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a Tea Party favorite who’s been very obvious about his 2016 presidential ambitions, has posed a slightly less aggressive strategy. While other GOP members of Congress tried to ignore the gay marriage tumult last week, Cruz issued a scathing statement criticizing the Supreme Court’s move and promising to introduce an amendment to the US Constitution that would prevent the government, including federal courts, from meddling with state marriage laws.“The Supreme Court’s decision to let rulings by lower court judges stand that redefine marriage is both tragic and indefensible,” he said. “This is judicial activism at its worst. The Constitution entrusts state legislatures, elected by the People, to define marriage consistent with the values and mores of their citizens.”
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For evangelical activists, the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage also underscored conservative frustration with judges who overturn laws passed by voters at the state level.David Lane, a California-based operative who leads the evangelical American Renewal Project, said his group is planning to target judges who have ruled in favor of gay marriage, including those who issued the lower court rulings upheld by the Supreme Court on Monday.“I want a fight over this,” he said. “I think the way to address it is to start removing these unelectable and unaccountable judges who are doing this to our country. They have no right to rule a free people. What they’re doing, it’s judicial anarchy.”Lane added that evangelical activists are still figuring out how best to accomplish this—federal judges are appointed for life, and only 15 have ever been impeached—but said he is looking for a member of the House of Representatives to introduce an impeachment bill.“The way we address this is we start removing unelected and unaccountable judges,” he said. “And then we remove the members of Congress who don’t vote to impeach them.”FIND ANOTHER BATTLE TO FIGHT
Despite the outrage over the gay marriage rulings, many conservatives have, practically speaking at least, moved on, seizing on religious freedom as the next battleground in the culture wars and directing their energy toward passing legislation that would allow people to refuse services to gay people on religious grounds.
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