Among all the various constituencies that tend to back Donald Trump, you might wonder if the revelation that the president paid a six-figure settlement to a porn star to keep quiet about their adulterous affair—one that occurred only months after his wife had given birth to their infant son—would cause evangelical voters to decide that placing their faith in him was, perhaps, an ill-advised decision.

You would be wrong, though. Despite an overall approval rating that hovers in the high 30s, Trump still enjoys the support of 61 percent of evangelical Christians. "Alright, you get a mulligan," said Family Research Council president Tony Perkins on Politico's Off Message podcast, describing his organization's attitude towards Trump, even after the Stormy Daniels story broke. "You get a do-over here."

The reason for this loyalty, which persists despite a list of decidedly un-Biblical presidential behaviors too lengthy to catalog here, is that nothing matters more to the religious right than making abortions incrementally harder to get. While Perkins allows that Trump was his organization's "plan B" during the 2016 election, he decided at the time that he would support the nominee under three conditions: a commitment to appoint pro-life judges to the bench; a promise from the historically pro-choice candidate not to weaken the party platform's "conservative planks"; and the selection of a proven "pro-life, pro-family running mate." To Perkins' surprise, Trump ended up checking all three boxes, and so he earned the FRC's support.

He says his only gripe with the administration is that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is not doing enough to stop abortions and liberal activism around the world. “We’re seeing Soros dollars being connected with USAID funds, and they’re creating these pro-abortion, pro-communist groups in some cases, working to take down conservative governments,” Perkins says.

It's easy to label the religious right as hypocritical every time the man for whom they voted in overwhelming numbers does something else that is anathema to Biblical principles. But Perkins' position reveals the startlingly transactional nature of being a so-called values voter in 2018. To many of them, abortion is not just the most important issue in politics today—it is the only issue in politics today. As long as a public servant shills for "religious freedom" and elevates dedicated pro-lifers to positions of power, millions of people are willing to look the other way on anything and everything else. "From a policy standpoint," Perkins told Off Message, "he has delivered more than any other president in my lifetime.”

It is worth reiterating that Trump's support among Christian leaders and religious voters—even among self-described evangelicals—is hardly universal. There are plenty of decent, churchgoing Americans who do not believe that their private religious convictions require them to cast their ballots for any particular candidate for office, much less a thrice-divorced serial adulterer who has bragged on tape about committing sexual assault.

For voters who feel differently, though, Donald Trump's pragmatic adoption of a staunch pro-life agenda has made their decision easy. Evangelicals are no longer a faith-based political constituency, inasmuch as the term refers to a group of like-minded people who share a defined set of moral principles, and who judge aspiring politicians based on their demonstrated adherence to the entire thing. Instead, it has evolved into just another virulently anti-abortion activist group, except one that operates behind a facade of performative piety so as to pretend that their positions on any given issue are compelled by some higher calling. It isn't clear whether this act was, until recently, intended to fool others or to delude themselves. But either way, they're finally being a little more honest about it.