Spoiler Alert: 

The Con Game of "Religious Freedom" Laws

It's a predictable cycle. "Conservative" lawmakers craft bills clearly designed to pander to religious voters. From laws legalizing discrimination against gays to bans on non-believers holding public office, illegal restrictions on abortions to a nearly infinite  stream of "one man, one woman" marriage-inequality laws, a seemingly endless supply of attempts to legislate based on religious belief streams through our legal systems.

These laws inflame the passions of their target audience- a group known for having an enlarged Amygdala, the center of the brain responsible for fear, aggression, and emotional reasoning. The tactic is extremely effective in manipulating a desired reaction- and so these constituents, their higher faculties overcome by emotional fervor, make their wishes known. They write letters and emails. They make phone calls. They stage demonstrations. 

In essence, democracy happens. 

The message is clear: We support these laws, and if you don't want angry voters on your hands, you'd better sign off on them. And given that nearly 80% of the American public identifies as Christian, it's a viable threat. 

So the bill gets signed. Other politicians, just as keen to curry favor with such a large and vote-happy section of the population, send it on. Many of them go on to become laws.

Then,  a few months (or years) later, the law is struck down.

There is almost inevitably an angry backlash. Terms like "judicial activism" and "tyranny" are dusted off and trotted out. Grand conspiracy theories are woven. Comparisons to historical dictatorships are thrown about and swallowed wholesale without any thought for factual accuracy. 

The incident is taken as proof positive that religion is "under attack" and that the religious are victims of the worst kind of discrimination. "This is what happens when you don't vote for extreme enough representatives," the pundits stealthily imply- or, in some cases, state blatantly. Any other narrative is derided, not unironically, as simply a part of the conspiracy. 

So what happens in this cycle? Is it really such a miscarriage of justice? The people certainly seem to think so.

The truth is much, much sneakier.

The lawmakers who create this cycle are not unaware of its existence. Many of them are profoundly well educated in law, and those who aren't certainly have access to advisers and lawyers to help them with their homework. This is not some accident, a mishap caused by a simple oversight or misinterpretation. 

These laws are deliberately crafted as to be unconstitutional. The legislators and figureheads know they won't stand. Their sole purpose is to elicit an emotional response- first on their passing and again (and more importantly) on their repeal. The narrative of a grand secular conspiracy to erode religious rights is extremely useful in manipulating a voting population that is predisposed to seek persecution- which, due to the magic of cognitive bias and skillfully-spun contrivances, seems to be everywhere. 

In essence, they are designed to fail. The entire point is to create a law that will be simultaneously popular with the voters and completely, unsustainably flawed, in order to "fire up the voting base" and keep the ballot box crammed with low-information votes. 

This kind of deliberate abuse of our lawmaking structure is not uncommon enough to be the exception. False narratives framing checking of unbridled privilege as tyrannical repression are nothing new. Voter gullibility is not a recent phenomenon. The only thing that has changed in recent years is the ability for this sort of mendacity to be quickly and easily disseminated to millions of willing parrots. 

We have passed the information age, and come to the next step. 

The Disinformation Age.