When you’re losing the argument, change the subject.

This was the united effort of frustrated, intolerant progressives – here in Colorado and across the country – in the wake of Colorado, once again, being chastised by the U.S. Supreme Court for its heavy handed and illegal efforts to force citizens to violate their consciences and compel speech the government prefers.

Few were surprised when the Court, in a 6-3 decision, sided with Lakewood web designer Lorie Smith of 303 Creative who declines to produce custom websites for same-sex weddings (and other subjects), citing her religious beliefs. Equally unsurprising was that those who disagreed with the outcome, from the three dissenting justices to Colorado’s elected officials, chose not to discuss the facts of the case.

Instead, they deployed their frustratingly effective if disingenuous strategy of deflection and demonization aimed at putting freedom-minded religious conservatives on the defensive.

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In the Court’s opinion Colorado’s Justice Neil Gorsuch put the real issue succinctly: “As surely as Ms. Smith seeks to engage in protected First Amendment speech, Colorado seeks to compel speech Ms. Smith does not wish to provide.”

Progressives knew they couldn’t win on that one so, instead, they recast the decision as taking rights away from LGBTQ people as a class and denying services to them.

Except for the fact that it doesn’t.

Or consider how Gov. Jared Polis inserted this unintentionally ironic statement in his reaction to several June Supreme Court decisions: “We are committed to building a Colorado for all where the powerful few do not control the freedom of all Coloradans.”

Yet that is precisely his government in the form of what the state Civil Rights Commission has been doing and which the Supreme Court has countermanded not once, but twice.

Very few are going to read Gorsuch’s extremely compelling, detailed opinion, and the liberals know it. Yet he presents a step-by-step discussion of how the state would compel Smith to create products containing content that violates her personal religious beliefs.

What you won’t hear progressives discuss are the several stipulations agreed to by the State of Colorado, most notably that 303 Creative will indeed serve LGBTQ people. The state also agreed that Smith’s websites are unique, customized, personalized creations, not a “fill in the blanks” generic product.

Gorsuch also dismantles the overwrought, and often irrelevant, objections to the decision brick by brick, saying that they “float on a sea of hypotheticals.”

In fact, the dissent by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor was so focused on changing the subject – and so internally inconsistent – that Gorsuch said, “it is difficult to read the dissent and conclude we are looking at the same case.”

But arguing detailed, nuanced facts is not what matters to anti-religious liberals. Their goal is to eliminate religious dissent and enforce their orthodoxy in every forum they can. They will not hesitate to employ the coercive power of government to literally destroy the businesses and reputations of those who will not comply.

And when they are called out, in addition to deflecting a fact-focused discussion, they demonize the messenger. In this case, they inflated a post-decision narrative about a “fake” customer inquiry to Smith about making a website for a same-sex wedding, even though separate courts that disagreed on the case’s outcome dismissed this contention.

But it does work to further the dangerous progressive effort to demonize and delegitimize the courts when judges issue decisions that counter the liberal demand for ideological compliance.

As they rev up their progressive bulldozers, they should take care that the logical extension of their anti-American zeal doesn’t run over their own comrades.

Do they really want to create a massive state-controlled thought machine where, as Gorsuch contends, “countless other creative professionals, too, could be forced to choose between remaining silent, producing speech that violates their beliefs or speaking their minds and incurring sanctions for doing so.”

Gorsuch specifically cites the profession of speechwriting, which I have engaged in for decades, (along with professional ghostwriting). It should send shudders through liberals and conservatives, as it does me, that the government could force me to write speeches for people whose views I find abhorrent. 

This, however, is what Sonia Sotomayor’s America would look like. And it is what progressives have worked for years to create in Colorado.

They have, so far, failed. But they will play the long game and keep deflecting, ducking, demagoguing and demonizing until they get the forced compliance they want – at the expense of your freedom of conscience.

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.