On the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting targeting gay men, lesbians, and transgender people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, congressional Republicans opted not to take a stand against guns or for gay rights, but instead to double down on legislation entrenching legal discrimination. On Tuesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on a bill called "the First Amendment Defense Act" (FADA), which does not actually defend the First Amendment, but rather gives individuals wide leeway for bigotry. The language of the bill is so expansive it could not only protect employers who refuse to hire gay people the employer believes to be sexually active but could allow your boss to fire you if he thought you were having premarital sex. More important: It's a preview of what may be a core conservative legal strategy going forward.

FADA would bar the federal government from imposing any penalty at all on someone who discriminates based on their religious belief or moral conviction that "(1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage." FADA would make it impossible for the government to remove tax-exempt status from a discriminatory institution or pull a grant from an employer who refuses to hire sexually active unmarried women.

Key to FADA is the idea of "religious liberty" or "religious freedom," something Republicans have been pushing in earnest since their opposition to contraception coverage in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Back then, many Republicans claimed that the ACA's requirement that contraception be covered fully under insurance plans violated the religious freedom of employers who provided workplace health plans but had a moral objections to birth control. Religious employers were already exempted, but conservatives believed any employer, even at a public ostensibly secular company, should have the right to refuse to cover birth control for employees. Dozens of employers brought lawsuits, and a pair of them — one brought by the crafting emporium Hobby Lobby and the other by furniture maker Conestoga Wood — went to the Supreme Court. They brought their claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a '90s-era law, and won.

Now, Republicans want to expand that strategy further. They can't do it under the First Amendment, which protects the free exercise of religion but does not say that your religion offers carte blanche to discriminate; it also prevents the establishment of religion, which places limits on the government either discriminating on the basis of religion or promoting one religion over another. That makes the First Amendment a particularly bad vehicle to defend, say, a county clerk — a government employee — who refuses to grant a marriage license to a same-sex couple, or a school principal who fires a teacher because she moved in with her boyfriend.

Republicans know this, because conservatives have tried to use the First Amendment to allow them to discriminate before, and have lost. As Ian Milllhiser at ThinkProgress reports, when those wishing to use their religion as a cover for discrimination go to court on First Amendment grounds, their claims are often rejected: A BBQ joint owner who said his religion compelled him to have a whites-only lunch counter ("patently frivolous," said the Supreme Court); a Christian school that paid women less because men are supposed to be heads of households (not a good reason to exempt the school from anti-discrimination laws, a federal appeals court ruled); and Bob Jones University, which until recently banned interracial dating for violating Christian values and expelled any student who dated outside of their race (the school claimed it should be able to receive tax subsidies; the Supreme Court spurned that argument, holding that "the Government has a fundamental, overriding interest in eradicating racial discrimination in education").

Since the First Amendment doesn't support the kind of overt discrimination some conservatives have long wanted it to, contemporary Republicans need a new law. That's where FADA comes in. Though the words "First Amendment" are in the title, it in fact flies in the face of how the twin values of free exercise of religion and the non-establishment of religion have long been understood. It would allow any employer with a government contract to refuse to let an employee take time off to care for a sick same-sex spouse, or terminate the employment of an unmarried woman if she became pregnant, as long as the employer said he or she was acting in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction. Social Security administrators could simply refuse to process paperwork for LGBT people and claim they were exercising their religious liberty, and a public housing administrator or social worker could refuse to help single mothers.

FADA has 171 co-sponsors, almost all of them Republicans. Donald Trump has promised to sign it into law if given the chance.

This is a preview of what's to come from the Republican Party on women's rights and LGBT rights. Right now, the Republican Party is also in the midst of platform debates, a key component of which is the question of how the party treats gay, lesbian, and transgender people. So far, the answer is not well. After declaring opposition to women in combat and deeming pornography a public menace, delegates rejected any wording that would oppose discrimination against LGBT people — including a line proposed by more moderate members condemning terrorists targeting gay people. "Can you not at the very least stand up for the right for us not to be killed?" openly gay D.C. delegate Rachel Hoff implored.

And that was in addition to repeated nods at "natural marriage," which the platform says is more likely to prevent children from being drug-addicted derelicts; statements affirming proposed state laws to regulate which bathrooms people can use (a swipe at transgender people who want to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity); and support of "conversion therapy," which seeks to convert gay people to heterosexuality, and has not only been characterized as total bunk by the American Psychological Association but is often so dangerous to LGBT youth people that it's been banned in several states.

The past eight years have brought watershed victories for gay rights and women's rights. Same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states, and the Obama administration pushed through a series of anti-discrimination policies protecting LGBT Americans. Women are now allowed in combat, and the Supreme Court just issued a favorable decision in the biggest abortion rights case in decades. Transgender people are more visible than ever, and while "bathroom bills" are part of a broader backlash, the federal government is supportive of the rights of trans people to use the bathroom of their choice and of trans youth to be treated fairly at school.

That swift change has left many of the more conservative members of the GOP grasping at a rapidly fading Christian dominance. Having lost the First Amendment argument when conservatives tried to use it to justify racial discrimination but seeing "religious freedom" triumph in limiting women's access to birth control, they're now focusing on laws that put religious freedom on steroids. If both the arc of American history and opinion polls tell us anything, it's that anti-gay, anti-woman conservatives will lose — eventually. But it could be a protracted war, and ugly discrimination-abetting laws like FADA may be harbingers of what is to come.

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Jill Filipovic senior political writer Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com.

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