What … what is he even suggesting?

Before you watch, possibly relevant new data from Pew:

I can’t imagine why. The fearless defenders of First Amendment liberties at the ACLU are also laser-focused on Karen Pence’s rights whether our country can tolerate Karen Pence:

This sends a terrible message to students.

Do we want to live in a country with leaders who are willing to disavow LGBTQ youth? https://t.co/XZ8ar5uunm

— ACLU (@ACLU) January 16, 2019

Stipulate that “we” don’t want to live in such a country. What solution do they recommend to this knotty problem? Suing Karen Pence so that she can’t take a job teaching art part-time at a traditionalist Christian school?

I think that’s what John King is trying to get at it in the clip below. The idea is that American taxpayers, who of course include gay men and women, shouldn’t be forced to subsidize government perks for a quasi-official who’s chosen to join an organization that discriminates against them. (Whether the school would be willing to hire someone who’s attracted to the same sex but who eschews sexual activity is unclear from its stated policy.) But instead of arguing that Pence should somehow be blocked from taking the job — how? — King toys with the idea of cutting off those perks. The chief one of which is security to ensure her personal safety. W-w-w-what?

And why would this thought occur with respect to someone as marginal as the vice president’s wife and a teaching job, of all things? The media spent many months chattering about the Muslim travel ban proposed by Trump on the trail in 2015. He was lambasted daily for it by lefties. But I don’t remember ever once hearing that we should maybe reconsider whether to fund his Secret Service protection since, after all, American Muslims are among the U.S. taxpayers covering the cost of it. It’s weird that Karen Pence’s affront to gays would draw a suggestion this draconian when Trump’s various demagoguery doesn’t.

Via the Free Beacon, here’s the clip. Note the puzzlement by reporter Olivier Knox. I think the broader left is at a place right now with respect to Christian education roughly equivalent to where they were with border security 10 years ago. Back then they were still all for it publicly, reasoning that open hostility to enforcement would have been a liability with voters. Nowadays you have members of Congress calling for the abolition of ICE and Nancy Pelosi herself dismissing the border wall as “immoral” for reasons only she seems to understand. By the same logic, I don’t think many Democrats would publicly sign on to a blanket statement like “traditional Christian education is bad.” But give ’em time. The Overton window doesn’t move overnight. Their baseline belief, that Christians should treat gays equally in all things regardless of what the First Amendment and Christian dogma might say about it, is already well established. Inevitably it’ll drift towards “Christianity is immoral, full stop” as it becomes safer politically to hold it. The drift in Congress has already begun.