Filing this one under the evangelical persecution complex, from Slate where the Supreme Court’s Fake Praying Coach Case Just Got Faker:

At the time, the decision was embarrassing enough, as it rested on the fiction that the coach, Joe Kennedy, was reprimanded for “private religious expression” when he was actually establishing huge prayer circles in the middle of the field. Since then, the situation has only further exposed the shameful artifice of the ruling. At first, Kennedy appeared to have little interest in taking back his old job, which was supposedly what he was fighting for. Then he acknowledged that he had sold his house and moved across the country, with no plans to move back. Finally, on Friday, Kennedy returned to coach one football game. Then he quit, as the Seattle Times reported on Wednesday. He has no evident desire to exercise the rights that his lawyers fought for over years of litigation. Those lawyers, however, will walk away with $1.775 million in attorneys’ fees, paid out by the school district.

Half truths or completely fake issues blown into big controversies that whip their evangelical nutter base into a frenzy. If just the existence of a rainbow 🌈 can set them off, prayer + education + football was an amazing combination to spin up.

Much like the equally fake cake maker who might have been asked to make a cake for same-sex couples:

In that case, a website designer named Lorie Smith said Colorado’s nondiscrimination law forced her to make wedding websites for same-sex couples—if asked. But she was never asked! Smith’s lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom claimed that one gay couple, Stewart and Mike, indicated some vague interest in engaging her services. They seized upon this allegation as proof that Smith might imminently discriminate, break the law, and face penalties. One day before the decision, though, the New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant reported that Stewart and Mike do not exist. They were made up. Smith’s entire business, too, had tenuous roots in reality; it seemed to exist largely to serve as a test case for Alliance Defending Freedom. Mission accomplished. None of these deceptions stopped the court’s hard-right supermajority from siding with the web designer.

Woof.