Let's say the stakes have been raised.
Once upon a time, the nascent religious right was upset about what kind of books their children were required to read in public schools. Everything from Huckleberry Finn to The Catcher in the Rye and many in between were the topics of newsletters, church group meetings and lectures at service clubs and PTA meetings. Mad magazine even made the list if I recall correctly. (And this was in a time when government schools actually had standards for dress and behavior. Can you imagine the uproar if girls were required to wear skirts today?)
It seems to me that the right and the left are engaged in a contest to see how many laws they can pass at the highest level of government to control people they don't like. The list would be extensive, but how's this for a start: homosexuals, smokers, immigrants, trial lawyers, farmers, salesmen, business executives, mortgage bankers, and (you guessed it!) members of religious orders. (I left out husbands of brain-dead women, but Mr. Gold already mentioned that.)
One thing you have in common with liberals is your hatred of religious people.
Come on. You don't know me. I haven't a hateful bone in my body.
Again I go back to 1964. It was just assumed that society was moral with respect to homosexuality, respect for religion, pro-American values taught in schools, etc. We can debate till the cows come home about whether it is good or bad that these things are now passe. But the average “religious right” activist at the time didn’t have to worry that their basic moral beliefs would be blatantly violated in school. And to put another spin on it, if you told the average democrat in 1964 that their party’s main reason for being 40 years hence would be abortion and gay marriage you’d have been shot on site.