The Religious Right has lost, miserably and completely

Extreme statement? Consider that:

1. Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land. Sure, some restrictions have been added in a handful of states. But by and large, on-demand abortion is still legal. And a large majority of Americans want it to stay exactly that way.
2. There are more atheists, agnostics, and non-believers now, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the population, than at any other time in our history. There is a proud atheist serving in Congress.
3. There are not religious monuments in our courthouses. And faced with certain lawsuits, few religious nutjobs want to try and push that issue.
4. Teacher-led, compulsory prayer in schools is gone, and it's not coming back. However, you will find gay-straight alliances in an increasing number of schools.
5. Speaking of which, we now have gay marriage in two states. New York is likely to soon follow. And it's only a matter of time before California, one of the most liberal states in the country, overturns Proposition 8. Young people support full gay equality, including marriage, by enormous margins. A wide swath of states - even states as conservative as Kentucky - outlaw discrimination against LGBT citizens to some extent. And civil unions have been available in states like Vermont and New Hampshire for years now.
   
6. Having Barney Frank in Congress was bad enough for them, but as of the next legislature, Congress will have three LGBT representatives - 2 gay men (Frank and Polis) and one lesbian (Baldwin.)
7. Church attendance rates are in a steady decline. We're not France or Sweden, yet, but just give us time.
8. Birth control and contraception are nothing less than ubiquitous. You can count the number of people who wait until marriage to have sex on one hand. Fewer and fewer schools follow the "abstinence only" route in sex education, because it has been quantitatively demonstrated that that route leads to higher rates of teen pregnancy.
   
9. There is still plenty of violence, vulgarity, and nudity on TV, in the videos, in music, and in video games. Pornography is hardly illegal, and it is easily accessible by anybody with an Internet connection. The FCC can go nuts over Janet Jackson showing her breast for less than a second on national TV, but any teenager with half a brain and an Internet connection can download gigabytes of hardcore lesbian porn within a matter of hours.
   
10. By and large, schools teach evolution, not creationism. When creationism has reared its ugly head in the context of science, the courts have usually done the rational thing and ordered corrective action.
11. It has been a rather long time since the traditional nuclear family - one man, one woman, married with children - represented a majority of our population. That family arrangement is shrinking in importance with each passing day.
12. Terri Schiavo is dead, and as Floridians are well aware, she did not die naturally. Washington just passed a "death with dignity" proposition in this election.
    
13. In a related item, the Obama Administration means that stem cell research is coming. Not even a question.
    
14. And most importantly of all, Americans have just elected the most liberal government in our history. Not within my lifetime has the Religious Right held less political capital and influence than it does currently.

The Religious Right has utterly failed at transforming this country into some sort of Christian pseudo-theocracy, composed of heterosexual Protestant families, married with children, who go to church every Sunday and vote unwaveringly Republican. Saying "epic fail" doesn't quite do it justice. As the rest of us advanced fearlessly into the future, they remained firmly moored in the cultural norms of 1950, somehow idiotically believing that the rest of us were going to follow them backwards through time. This latest election cycle was certainly not the coup de grace for the movement, but it is definitely, by any reasonable measure, the beginning of a long overdue end. The modern Religious Right declared war on our secular culture nearly 30 years ago, and they have lost virtually every important battle in that war since then. And they will continue to do so, because America is a pluralistic liberal democracy. Our culture is the progeny of ideals promulgated during the unabashedly anti-religious Enlightenment of the 18th Century. We can never "return" to being a Christian nation, because we never were a Christian nation in the first place.

Will the Religious Right choose a different route in their attempts to reform society, perhaps helping the less fortunate, as their Jesus did? Or will they continue to drive themselves further and further into absolute irrelevance by attempting to use secular government institutions to impose a bigoted, reactionary religious agenda? Only time will tell.