The progressives across America have had free rein under an enthusiastically encouraging Barack Obama. On issues of "gay" rights, transgenderism and legally mandated permissions for those who have chosen alternative sexual lifestyles, they've won big in recent years.

Such as the removal of Brendan Eich as chief of Mozilla, after he expressed support for traditional marriage.

Noted commentator Pat Buchanan explained how HBO' "Real Time" host Bill Maher even decried the power of what he called the "gay mafia."

"If you cross them you do get whacked," Maher said.

Buchanan was lamenting the loss of Eich's innovating and entrepreneurial services to Mozilla during a vicious attack by leftists after it was revealed he contributed $1,000 to Proposition 8, whereby a majority of Californians voted in 2008 to reinstate a ban on same-sex "marriage."

That issue was backed by evangelicals, the Catholic Church, Mormons and the black churches and carried 70 percent of the African-American vote.

"Though Eich apologized for any 'pain' he had caused and pledged to promote equality for gays and lesbians at Mozilla, his plea for clemency failed to move his accusers. Too late. According to The Guardian, he quit after it was revealed that he had also contributed – 'The horror, the horror!' – to the Buchanan campaign of 1992."

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Then there was the actual destruction of the Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery in Oregon.

Found to have discriminated by declining to use their talents to promote same-sex weddings, the owners were fined more than $135,000 and put out of business. They are one among many facing such penalties, although not all are so large.

Noting the mandates for private business owners to promote an LGBT agenda or be penalized by the government, WND Managing Editor David Kupelian wrote on the results of the far-left campaign to make what essentially is gender dysphoria, a condition from which most sufferers recover, accepted as normal.

"Actually, this 'dysphoria' business is a strategic half-measure; the unabashed, publicly stated goal of the LGBT world is to get gender identity disorder completely de-pathologized so it is officially and legally declared to be an absolutely normal variant of human sexuality. It is, after all, the 'T' in the LGBT coalition, which represents itself as a minority community exactly like Blacks and Jews – so, no room for mental illness in the mix," he wrote.

That's even though, "In fact, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Paul R. McHugh, M.D., confirms that transgenderism is indeed a 'mental disorder,'" Kupelian continued.

The Eich fight and the Sweet Cakes dispute both served up traditional faith values and the morality of marriage that has been accepted for millennia up on a platter to activists who want now to make what has been abnormal normal.

At the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, David Bernstein, the George Mason University Foundation Professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School, wrote about the price for those victories.

"When I first posted about this on Facebook, I wrote that I hope liberals really enjoyed running Brendan Eich out of his job and closing down the Sweet Cakes bakery, because it cost them the Supreme Court," he wrote.

He suggested that it was one little-reported remark during oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court that blew up like a wildfire in dry grass among conservatives that likely influenced the 2016 election.

It was during arguments on the issue of Obergefell, the case through which five leftist judges on the Supreme Court destroyed millennia of precedent and overturned their own ruling from only months earlier to create same-sex "marriage" across the nation.

There, Justice Samuel Alito was asking about the ramifications of the decision on religious rights.

"Well, in the Bob Jones case, the court held that a college was not entitled to tax-exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university of a college if it opposed same-sex marriage?" he said.

Obama's solicitor general, Don Verrilli, triggered a groundswell of reaction when he said: "You know, I, I don't think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it's certainly going to be an issue. I don't deny that. I don't deny that, Justice Alito. It is – it is going to be an issue."

"With the mainstream media busy celebrating the Supreme Court's ultimate recognition of a right to same-sex marriage, this didn't get that much attention in mainstream news outlets. But [it] … was big news in both the conservative blogosphere and in publications catering to religiously traditionalist audiences," Bernstein wrote.

"The idea that Regent University or Brigham Young University or the local Catholic university or the many hundreds of other religious schools – and potentially other religious organizations – could be put at a severe competitive disadvantage if they refused on theological grounds to extend the same recognition to same-sex couples as to opposite-sex couples struck many as a direct and serious assault on religious liberty.

"In short, many religious Christians of a traditionalist bent believed that liberals not only reduced their deeply held beliefs to bigotry, but want to run them out of their jobs, close down their stores and undermine their institutions," he wrote.

He said the election results bear out that suspicion that religious people had an influence.

"Trump received 81 percent of the white evangelical Christian vote, and Hillary Clinton only 16 percent. Trump did significantly better than the overtly religious Mitt Romney and the overtly evangelical George W. Bush. He likely over-performed among other theologically conservative voters, such as traditionalist Catholics, as well," he said.

"The most logical answer is that religious traditionalist felt that their religious liberty was under assault from liberals."

He quoted Sean Trend of RealClearPolitics who noted that Democrats in recent years booed the inclusion of God in their platform, endorsed demands on schools for transgender students, tried to get small business to cover abortion-inducing drugs, tried to force nuns to provide contraceptives, torpedoed Eich, closed down Sweet Cakes and more.

Continued Bernstein, "Megan McArdle of Bloomberg similarly pointed out, 'Over the last few years, as controversies have erupted over the rights of cake bakers and pizza places to refuse to cater gay weddings, the rights of nuns to refuse to provide insurance that covers birth control, the rights of Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform abortions, and the rights of Christian schools to teach (and require students and teachers to practice) traditional Christian morality, some Christians have begun to feel that their communities are under existential threat.'"

But the election results now give Trump the open door to nominate conservative justices.

The Supreme Court right now has a roughly evenly split, with four generally voting liberal and four taking a more traditional constitutional approach.

There is one vacancy, and the U.S. Senate has essentially ignored Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland.

There is a remote possibility Obama could appoint Garland during a Senate recess, but that would be a temporary appointment and stage the unwanted circumstance of a justice who is heading out the door because he is not wanted there.

And several of the most liberal voters at the court are in or approaching their 80s, leaving open the possibility that a President Trump could do as he's promised and name multiple judges who have the will to overturn Roe v. Wade, the holy grail of abortion and the one outcome, if changed, could most significantly impact a liberal agenda.

WND reported at the time of the election Americans likely avoided an extreme leftward lurch that the U.S. Supreme Court probably would have taken under a President Hillary Clinton with a Democrat majority in the U.S. Senate.

The fear for many Americans was that Democrats in the White House and Senate soon would install judges in the Supreme Court who would curb Second Amendment rights, or say whether Christians will have the freedom to proclaim the divinity of Jesus Christ, even though it may offend Muslims, or recite Scripture that condemns homosexual behavior.

Or even whether Christians will be forced to pay for abortions conducted at any point in a pregnancy.

Already five justices who lined up with President Obama's agenda have decided that same-sex couples have a right to marriage.

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Obama previously appointed two far-left justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Kagan was one of two justices, the other being Ruth Ginsburg, who publicly advocated for same-sex "marriage" while the Supreme Court case was under way by performing such ceremonies. Both Kagan and Ginsburg then refused requests to abide by typical judicial ethics rules and recuse themselves from the case.

Trump has promised he would nominate candidates for the Supreme Court from a list of names he's released. The list features judges regarded as "originalists," who believe the Constitution should be interpreted according to the original intent of the founders.

He has warned: "We have a very clear choice in this election. The freedoms we cherish and the constitutional values and principles our country was founded on are in jeopardy."

He promised to name appointees "in the mold of Scalia."