Why aren't conservatives madder at conservatives having screwed everything up for conservatives by being a bunch of huge jerks about being conservative so long? I am looking, today, at @michaelbd, who is fairly reasonable, as conservatives go. 1/
Specifically, his NR piece contra "Bostock". The basic problem with his point here is that one of the core tenets of movement conservatism has been the uncompromising frustration of many such highly popular & desirable but, alas, 'liberal' reforms. 2/ nationalreview.com/2020/06/what-a… 
Let's put it in terms of ranked references (MBD's, I think.)
1st: substantial legal reforms to protect LGBTQ persons against arbitrary firings, based on animus, and other forms of discrimination. (Housing?) But religious organizations get substantial conscience carve-outs. 3/
1st: substantial legal reforms to protect LGBTQ persons against arbitrary firings, based on animus, and other forms of discrimination. (Housing?) But religious organizations get substantial conscience carve-outs. 3/
2nd: things stay bad for LGBTQ's but at least religious organizations operate with expansive, iron-clad religious liberty guarantees!
3rd: LGBTQ's get the protection they deserve but, arguably, courts err on the side of over-protection. Religious liberty gets a shave. 4/
3rd: LGBTQ's get the protection they deserve but, arguably, courts err on the side of over-protection. Religious liberty gets a shave. 4/
MBD is objecting to 3 by saying that 1 would be best. But obviously the reason we've got 3 is no power on earth could budge conservatives off 2, legislatively, for the longest time. 'Gods, guns and gays' was a slogan that worked, and not because gay was good! 5/
Now, of course, things were shifting on their own. They really were. But the reason we are now at 3, by MDB's lights, is that it's totally understandable that those on the other side, and judges - seeing resistance to budge off 2 until forced - would be skeptical of 1. 6/
And conservatives never asked for 1, by name - not not until it was off the table, exchanged for 3. (Conservatives gave ground, gradually on the 1 front, but never easily or with good grace.) 7/
If you know religious conservatives, given their conscience druthers, have a demonstrated history of dressing up animus as 'conscience', you are rightly skeptical of 1. And MBD doesn't deny that, for the longest time, that's what we had. That was the way of it. 8/
So if you tell this story about how it's a damn shame we don't have 1, not 3, at least have the consistency to say that the main cause is conservatives clinging to 2 for decades. Until only very recently. 9/
MBD concludes: "And religious conservatives are going to get some of it, good and hard." But cons forced the choice for decades in these terms: EITHER let us oppress LGBTQ people, out of animus, as a team-building exercise, OR give it to us good and hard to stop us.' 10/
Two wrongs don't make a right, but if your side has refused to right a wrong, don't be surprised if what you end up with is a counter-wrong, to balance a wrong. And this is all assuming MBD is 100% right about the rights of the case. 11/
Excuse me, 'Gods, guns and gays' sounds like a polytheistic slogan from another timeline. We regret the typo.
