But the religious right leadership may just be too dug in to accept the newly emerging mainstream consensus: there's nothing wrong with gay marriage. It doesn't threaten straight marriage, Western Civilization is not at risk, God does not send hurricanes, earthquakes, and flocks of locusts to punish those who allegedly shake their fist at the heavens, by allowing consenting adults, two women or two men, to pledge their troth.

And that brings us to the following images. It's simple:

(1) - The cat is "the religious right".

(2) - the box represents "the crusade against the big, scary, threat to the family, society, and everything good and holy, that's allegedly posed by same-sex marriage".

A few notes: of course, the cat didn't have to shove its head into the box. But it was almost inevitable that it would - it was in the nature of the cat. And because of its nature, once caught in the box the cat can't figure out how to extricate itself.

Like the cat, the religious right could extricate itself from the trap of fighting LBGT rights and declare the decades-long political crusade, launched in 1977 under the leadership of charismatic orange juice queen Anita Bryant, to have been a mistake. But that's unlikely to happen.

The evolution of the religious right as a movement has been defined by its opposition to the LGBT rights movement, and it's far from clear the religious right could even exist in its present form without exploiting powerful emotions centered around LGBT rights to mobilize its base.

Entire books have been written about this, such as Perfect Enemies

The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s, By John Gallagher and Chris Bull (link to Washington Post review of book).

But even though the twin movements co-evolved, in a sort of rough symbiosis, the religious right needs the LGBT rights movement - which in turn doesn't need the religious right at all.

The religious right needs to demonize LGBTI citizens who, for their part, would probably be thrilled if the movement that has for decades demonized them simply vanished from the Earth - or, for that matter, just continued to make an absurd spectacle of itself - kicking its hind legs like a cat whose head is caught in an empty cardboard soft drink carton.

