Republican presidential hopefuls describe ‘urgent threat to religious liberty’

DES MOINES, Iowa — Republican presidential hopefuls in Iowa and elsewhere have recently begun sounding a call to arms to Christian conservatives, describing what they say is an urgent threat to religious liberty.

Citing high-profile dust-ups over religious freedom bills in Indiana and Arkansas, the contenders are painting a vivid picture of faith under fire.

“In the past month, we have seen religious liberty under assault at an unprecedented level,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on Saturday at a forum sponsored by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition outside Des Moines.

In both Indiana and Arkansas, bills aimed at protecting religious liberty were modified after critics, including a number of corporations, asserted the laws would allow discrimination against lesbians and gays.

On the campaign trail, Republican hopefuls are blasting the modifications.

“Corporate America needs to be careful,” Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said on Saturday.

“We’ve got legislation in Louisiana to protect people of faith and of conscience. … Corporate America is not going to bully the governor of Louisiana,” he said, drawing loud applause.

Iowa traditionally draws early and intense campaigning by presidential aspirants because it is the first electoral contest in the long primary season.

But candidates face a dilemma there: Do they emphasize the socially conservative principles that play well with Iowa’s more conservative Republican electorate? Or do they stress a more mainstream conservatism that might play better later in the campaign?

Gay marriage is a particularly thorny issue, especially with the U.S. Supreme Court set to hear oral arguments this week in a legal challenge to laws prohibiting same-sex unions.

Overall, 50 percent of Americans now support gay marriage, according to data from Reuters/Ipsos, with 34 percent opposing it and 16 percent unsure.

Still, according to polling from the Pew Research Center, nearly 70 percent of white evangelicals oppose gay marriage, and in 2012, about 57 percent of Republican voters in the Iowa caucuses described themselves as evangelical Christians.