North Dakotans decide they already have all the religious liberty they need

This past Tuesday, North Dakotans voted on the following ballot initiative:

Government may not burden a person's or religious organization's religious liberty. The right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief may not be burdened unless the government proves it has a compelling governmental interest in infringing the specific act or refusal to act and has used the least restrictive means to further that interest. A burden includes indirect burdens such as withholding benefits, assessing penalties, or an exclusion from programs or access to facilities.

The YES side:

It doesn't take a genius to read into what supporters hoped to accomplish'everything from denying birth control services to employees, to eliminating abortion rights, to justifying wife beating on religious grounds, to further attacking LGBT folks.

[T]he initiative appears worded to bypass the Supreme Court's recent decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez which held that anti-gay groups cannot force state universities to fund them in violation of the university's anti-discrimination policy.

If you felt "burdened" by something supposedly based on religious beliefs, you were allowed to deny others their rights. So it's no surprise that this was pushed heavily by the Catholic Church and anti-abortion groups.

What is a surprise was the results:

Yes 36
No 64

Supporters of this abomination thought they had a new hook to win support, and they certainly managed to use some of the most innocuous language possible. Who is against religious freedom? No one!

Yet they barely managed to win a third of the electorate in one of the more conservative states in the nation. That was a testament to the effectiveness of both campaigns (I mean, just watch the ads above), but also to the fact that we oftentimes underestimate just how noxious the religious right's agenda is to most Americans.