THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

In the Christian worldview, the political Left has waged an assault on conservative Christian beliefs and practices wherever those beliefs and practices pose obstacles for the full liberation of the LGBTQ community. The Christian shop owner who refuses to make a custom wedding cake or a floral wedding arrangement for a gay couple; the Christian school that fires a teacher when she enters a lesbian relationship; the Christian marital counselor who declines to counsel two men on their sexual relationship--all these refusals must apparently be made unlawful, Christians feel, if LGBTQ individuals are to fully realize their rights as the Left sees them. The ongoing legal, social and cultural attacks on Christians' traditional practices has left many Christians feeling under siege in America. 

As the Left wages this battle, it also advocates vociferously for the rights of American Muslims (alongside an array of other minorities). Muslims and the Left have become so politically intertwined that, in the words of Eboo Patel, Barack Obama's former faith adviser, Muslims are a "totem, ... a symbol that signals, above all, a tribal belonging." I elaborate on the phenomenon in The Politics of Vulnerability:   

Muslims--and especially liberal advocacy on behalf of Muslims--are traits of the liberal mega-identity and opposition to Muslims is a trait of the conservative mega-identity. Nothing captures this political football better than variations of Obama's "Hope" poster with a woman in a hijab. The poster is used to protest Trump and was, for example, ubiquitous in the January 2017 Women's March on Washington. More generally, liberals have championed the hijab for years and featured women who wear headscarves in numerous prominent outlets. The phenomenon might seem peculiar, since the hijab as a facet of a modest (or restrictive) dress code for women is not ordinarily something that liberals would champion. But Muslims and hijab are part of the Left's mega-identity, and the Right--which isn't normally associated with feminism--makes feminist arguments against the hijab. 

The collective dynamics end up in a triangle of sorts: The more the Left challenges Christians' traditional beliefs in marriage, the more fiercely Christians oppose everything the Left stands for. Correspondingly, the more advocacy for Muslims' rights becomes a "lefty" thing to do, the more conservative Christians oppose Muslims' rights.  

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