Christian nationalism rising: Idaho drag ban bill is latest step up in persecution

As Kelcie Moseley-Morris of the Idaho Capital Sun recently reported, a bill to ban drag performances in public is expected to be introduced during the next legislative session.

The bill is the latest in a series of bills targeting the LGBTQ community that have been authored or backed by the Idaho Family Policy Center, an organization founded in 2021. That organization has written many of the most controversial pieces of legislation of recent legislative sessions: the bill that could have subjected librarians to felony charges, the law to allow relatives of an aborted fetus to sue for personal profit and the bill to make it a felony to provide gender-affirming care to minors.

All these are steps along a path, steps many conservative legislators have been happy to follow. They should ask where it’s leading.

Blaine Conzatti, the director of the Family Policy Center, is frank, honest and polite. His aim, however, is to fundamentally change the nature of American government and society — though he thinks of this as a return to its original purpose. His organization seeks “the lordship of Jesus Christ in all of life,” he explained in an interview.

He means lordship. And he truly means all of life.

Christian nationalism

Conzatti’s long-term vision is for an Idaho and an America that few would recognize.

“I would identify as a Christian nationalist,” he said when I asked for his appraisal of the term.

He said his only reservation about embracing the label is that some who use it are in fact populists, and populism rests on the foundation of democracy, which he opposes. The only “objective” basis for law, he argues, is biblical law.

“Government officials are God’s ministers who administer God’s justice through the power of the sword,” Conzatti said on one recent podcast. “And that is exactly the role of God’s law in the public square today.”

These assertions do resemble certain constitutional ideas: “All civil, penal, financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military, political, and other laws and regulations must be based on Islamic criteria. This principle applies absolutely and generally to all articles of the Constitution as well as to all other laws and regulations, and the wise persons of the Guardian Council are judges in this matter,” reads Article IV of the constitution of Iran (as translated by the International Constitutional Law Project).

Not long ago, some of Idaho’s more extreme lawmakers were (laughably) so frightened that sharia law was about to be enforced in the Gem State that they killed a bill required to give Idaho single mothers access to the federal child support enforcement system. Now that the closest realistic approximation has a foot in the door, many lawmakers have given Conzatti’s bills their enthusiastic support.

They should spend some time thinking about the future before they take up the sword Conzatti is thrusting into their hands. Today it’s being used to ban books and performances and practices that they disapprove of.

But as a wise man once warned: “People who live by the sword die by the sword.”

Christianity as the sole objective basis for law

Conzatti sought to quell concerns that the drag bill would make it illegal to be transgender when I spoke with him. He said it will be limited to public performances where a person of one biological sex makes themselves up as a caricature of the opposite sex and performs in a sexual manner.

The most obvious problem is a First Amendment one. Such a law cannot survive constitutional scrutiny, and we’ll just wind up sending taxpayer money to the ACLU once again.

But in Conzatti’s view, the Constitution is not the ultimate basis for law. Scripture is the only “objective” basis of law. Without scripture, he argues, we are left with only popular consensus, which he asserted was the basis for both slavery and the Holocaust.

In his public advocacy, Conzatti appeals to public consensus. He repeatedly said in an interview that “Idaho parents” don’t want their kids exposed to drag shows (a fate they can easily avoid by not taking them to drag shows). But the real basis for the proposed law is Deuteronomy 22:5, which declares that it is an abomination for one gender to wear the other’s clothing, as he explained in a recent podcast aimed at his fundamentalist audience.

“Civil use of the (Old Testament) law is affirmed in the New Testament. …” Conzatti said. “Government is supposed to use the law of God to restrain evil, to create the conditions for human flourishing because if people know that if they violate the law, government is going to come in and enforce penalties.”

Such laws would put in place criminal penalties not only for drag, but for being gay, premarital sex, adultery, disobeying one’s parents and many other things (one clear near-term priority, laid out in candidate surveys and recent podcasts, is removing exceptions for rape and incest from the abortion ban).

The biblical penalty for many of these “crimes” is death by stoning. Would Conzatti require disobedient children to be slowly bludgeoned to death at the city gates with rocks?

Don’t worry, Conzatti replied. God intends these to be maximal penalties, not mandatory penalties. So certainly the state will impose criminal penalties for adultery and disobeying one’s parents, but they may well fall short of death by torture.

And Conzatti gave assurances that those with religious views other than his have a future in a nation governed by Christian law.

“A Christian nation is the most tolerant,” he said.

But he also emphasized that “not all religions are created equal.”

The Mormon question

This should give many Idahoans — including many conservative, religious Idahoans — reasons to worry.

Idaho has a very specific history of religious persecution, one that could easily be revived by the rise of a fundamentalist Christian nationalism: persecution of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Idaho initially denied Latter-day Saints the vote, the right to hold office and the right to serve on a jury.

Before hopping on board with Conzatti’s agenda, LDS lawmakers should ask themselves how long their worship and religious practice could last under the theocracy it aims toward.

Though Latter-day Saints nearly universally consider themselves Christians, one-third of non-Mormon Christians do not consider Mormons to be Christians, according to Pew polls. And a poll by an affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention — the largest evangelical denomination — found three-quarters of protestant pastors do not consider Mormons to be Christians.

Among those with these beliefs is Pastor Toby Sumpter, a recent guest on Conzatti’s podcast dealing with the law of God in the public square. He posed the question: Why follow Christian law, rather than some other religious law?

“What God sent his son to die for you?” Sumpter answered. “What God took the curse of rebel men and women? What God endured that for you? The only God is the triune God, the Christian God. The Muslim God did not send his son for you.

“The Mormon God did not send his son to die for you.”

If this interpretation of Christianity were the basis for the law of the land, would Latter-day Saints be included in it? Would they get a seat on the equivalent of Iran’s Guardian Council, a group of religious scholars who determine religious law? Would they be merely “tolerated” as a secondary faith? Or would they be persecuted?

History suggests the second category progresses naturally to the third. The constitution of Iran recognizes Jews as a protected religious minority with full rights of religious worship, practice and education. Jews nonetheless fell under immediate persecution after the Iranian revolution, which has not relented for a half-century.

Today, the target of persecution is the LGBTQ community. Do not rest assured that it will end there.

Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman based in eastern Idaho.