When the same-sex marriage ruling came out, some of the opponents whined that as a result, those who opposed same-sex marriage because of their religious beliefs would be treated as pariahs and hounded when all they wanted was to be left alone to believe as they wished. Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito contributed to that sense of possible future victimhood in his dissent of the ruling outlawing the state bans on same-sex marriage inObergefell v. Hodges.

[This decision] will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy. In the course of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.

Perhaps recognizing how its reasoning may be used, the majority attempts, toward the end of its opinion, to reassure those who oppose same-sex marriage that their rights of conscience will be protected. We will soon see whether this proves to be true. I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.

What a pathetic picture he paints, reminiscent of underground churches in countries that persecute Christians.

But as Jack Jenkins writes, it turns out that it is the opponents of same-sex marriage who are attacking clergy and churches and denominations who support it and launching orchestrated attacks on them

For decades, conservative Christians who oppose LGBT equality have singled out the federal government or secular atheists as their preferred enemy in public settings, blasting both groups for supposedly attacking “traditional marriage” or infringing on their religious liberty. Yet in the months surrounding the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage across the country, right-wing Christians have become increasingly willing to cast blame — seemingly hypocritically — on a group they have often dismissed or outright ignored: Progressive Christians, especially those who support marriage equality.

The first hints of a growing front against liberal Christians came in May, when a coalition of conservative churches in Fountain Hills, Arizona publicly ganged up on a local progressive Methodist community. Unhappy with the church’s teachings, eight congregations launched a campaign entitled “Progressive Christianity: Fact or Fiction?,” a coordinated teaching and preaching series that included op-eds, a half-page advertisement in a local newspaper, and a massive banner with “progressive” written in jagged red letters and hemmed in quotation marks.

It is interesting the amount of projection that exists in the minds of the religious right, where they impute to others what their own intentions are.