The end of bigotry? Um, no.

I'm interested to see how the newly dominant leftists will disclaim their bigoted fringe. Expressions of racism on the left (for example, the Clarence Thomas hearings) haven't been seen as part of the Democratic mainstream because of the Democrats explicit focus on promotion of minority issues. Pro-border enforcement Republicans get unfairly tarred as racists because there are some racists that support enforcement and there is no real focus on minority issues in the Republican platform (because the focus is on equality of opportunity for all people, not particular groups). What will the Democrats do if the American mainstream starts to believe that the Democratic agenda is a mere pretext for anti-Christian bigotry?

The Christianist popular front began with the Romney strategy. Then it morphed into Prop 8, funded by $20 million of Mormon money. The leadership of the LDS church has every right to do this; but equally gay people and their families now have every right to highlight the Mormon church as an enemy of civil rights and of gay people everywhere. This will be decried as bigotry. But gays are not fighting to remove the civil rights of Mormons; but Mormons have successfuly campaigned to remove the civil rights of gays.

. . .

Gay people have every right to regard the Mormon church hierarchy as a mortal enemy.

This today from everyone's favorite anti-Israel gay gossip conspiracy blogger at the Atlantic, to whom I will not link. Note how he admits his own bigotry and then doubles down, justifing bigotry as a political counter-tactic and proclaiming that the faith leaders of millions of Americans are his mortal enemies.

There are undoubtedly anti-Christian bigots. There are, in all likelihood, Democrats, the party most overtly concerned about the separation of church and state. Their platform provides no cover for this particular expression of bigotry. But does the Democratic mainstream want us to believe they're all engaged in a battle against "The Christianist Front"? I'm very interested to see how the mainstream left deals with its bigoted fringe.

87% of Americans self-identify as Christians. Letting Andrew Sullivan set the tone of Democratic governance is not, I'm guessing, going to serve the Democratic party well electorally.