Arwa Mahdawi writes in The Guardian about the US court cases on LGBT+ discrimination.

These cases are, to put it mildly, a huge deal – and not just for LGBT people. The ruling will have serious implications for straight people who don’t comply with gender norms. It could allow employers to fire women who don’t wear heels or makeup. It could allow companies to discriminate against men who are not considered manly enough. It could give employers a green light to act as the gender police.

That’s not an accident. It’s part of the strategy. Globally we’re seeing a very well-funded attempt by the Christian Right to remove the separation of church and state, and to make the non-religious  and the non-Christian subject to Christian law.

If this were a campaign to introduce Sharia law in secular democracies the mainstream media would be outraged; because it’s a strategy to create Christian theocracies many newspaper proprietors support it and actively promote the key players.

It’s not, and it never was, just about LGBT+ people.

Here’s the Guardian again, this time reporting on the Australian Christian Lobby. Like the ADF in the US, it’s demanding the power for employers to fire people based on the employers’ most regressive religious beliefs. And like in the US, it’s part of a wider move to protect discrimination by, not against, Christian extremists.

ACL director Martyn Iles:

defended the prospect of hiring and firing based on the “Christian sexual ethic … that sexual relations are for one man and one woman” to the exclusion of others.

Once again Christian extremists are asking not just for protection from discrimination, but for the legal right to discriminate against anyone they disapprove of in the workplace, in housing and in healthcare. Gay people. Unmarried mothers. Feminists. Trans people. Women who aren’t saving themselves for marriage. People of other faiths. Anyone who doesn’t conform to a regressive view of human rights and behaviour.

The headlines may say LGBT+, but even if you’re straight and cisgender you’re a target too.

Mahdawi:

We can’t draw a line between feminism and the fight for gay liberation or trans equality. LGBT rights are human rights – we are all in this together.