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Notes -
On Catholic Integralism
Integralism won't happen in a meaningful way in the USA. Even if it could, that's a tricky path because, as @georgioz and @Treitak pointed out, it would open up a pretty epic failure mode; those with purely temporal and political goals would infiltrate whatever clerical or secular organizations (in the Catholic sense, like secular priests) they need to in order to grasp political power. We saw this with multiple Popes during the Borgias in Italy. More recently, we see this all over the South with various state and even federal level politicians holding some sort of "deacon" or "reverend" title. I mean, let's not even get started on the MLK line of succession (Sharpton, Jackson). So that you can see I am Fair and Blanced, Here's Josh Hawley doing a great Youth Pastor / Creed frontman impression.
The sneakier failure mode is something like the Orthodox Church in Russia. Orthodox priests and bishops aren't getting elected to the Duma, but they're part of the palace Kremlin intrigue to an extent. In order to preserve themselves, however, they mostly function as an elevated nationalistic cultural force. If you want to be really Russian, you hang a picture of the Patriarch next to your picture of Putin. Is there a supranational theology? Sort of, maybe. For Roman Catholics, this is a non-starter. If you really want to be Catholic but also totally embedded in a national or ethnic culture, you can try one of the Eastern Churches (Maronites etc.). Fully in communion with the Holy See, but autocephalus. Could there be an "American Catholic Church" probably not because that's goofy and because most of the Traditional Catholic groups explicitly trace their history to non-American origins and "liberal" Catholics don't care.
On Separation of Church and State
James Buckley (Wiliam's brother) has the best take on this. The "Separation of Church and State" was intended to prevent church authorities from dual-wielding power as elected officials. Furthermore, national laws couldn't be contravened by a religious leader. If you look back at the anti-catholic propaganda against Kennedy, this is what it focused on; not that Kennedy's catholic faith would lead him to make bad decisions, but that he would have to "change the laws" based on a decree from the Pope. Serving two masters and all of that.
You can vote your faith. Most actual theologies are also complete moral prescriptions. Would it be unfair to say that a secular humanist can't vote their morality?
The tricky part here is the 14th amendment. If a locality, say in Dearborn, MI or St. Marys, KS, wants to have public worship, ban LGBTQ books, and close all businesses one day a week, and that resolution passes overwhelmingly in the local municipality, is it illegal? There are a lot of legal groups not based in these areas that think it is and will create the necessary Rube Goldberg machine to get it in front of a Federal Judge. In fact, this was perhaps the central point of Willmoore Kendall's arguments against de-segregation. If the people of Alabama vote for it, why do the people of D.C. get to say no?
But then, the constitutional conservative in me does remember the Tyranny of the Majority. FLDS communities, Kiyras Joel in NYC are notorious for creating extremely hostile environments to their own people who then have no real recourse to secular authorities. As much as I LARP hard as a TradCath, I get worried that St. Marys, KS could turn into Waco 2.
On Which Option to Take
I've stated my position before; my idea is that anyone who wants to Trad/Orthodox/Snake Handel should just ... do it. Don't worry about the loss of cultural salience. There are dozens of biblical verses that all say versions of, "Don't seek the approval of those you hate." The revitalization of TLM Catholics over the past dozen years has been pretty specifically in response to the failures of modern liberalism, not rabid evangelization efforts. Ideas, like Dreher's, that Christianity is going to be outlawed are hyperbolic and logically unsatisfactory. If you watch his interview on the Pints With Aquinas podcast, it becomes obvious that this guy had a lot of personal trauma that he then transformed into a big part of his world view. At various times he was all of a zealous evangelical from Louisiana, a devout TLM Catholic, and, now, Orthodox. When I see someone dip into all three - but assure me that this time, I mean it! - I'm not going to put a lot of stock into their "well researched ideas."
On Where I Could Be Wrong
Again, a hat top to @WhiningCoil. I'm not worried about the Gub'ment coming after me for my beliefs alone, but I am worried about them going after the kids. When they no longer let you help children because you didn't sign the WrongThink waiver it gets spooky in a hurry. I've heard some shady rumours about TradCath households receiving visits from CPS because their neighbors were worried about six or seven kids running around. Because, like, who would have six or seven kids besides crazy cultists? Again, disclaimer, this is internet rumors, but I can see the path that leads there.
This might be your view on "separation of church and state." But I've encountered quite a lot of people, over more than 20 years, who disagree. Who argue that no, you can't vote your faith; or, at least if you do, that vote can't be allowed to influence the laws and government, because if it did, that would violate the separation of church and state, because said separation means the government is forbidden for doing anything that originates in religious belief.
I remember it being quite prevalent in the debates about gay marriage. Arguments that since all arguments in opposition to gay marriage are religious in origin, letting them influence the law in any way whatsoever violates separation of church and state. I also remember that when people, in response to these claims that "there are no secular arguments against gay marriage," would present such secular arguments, their interlocutor would note that the people presenting these secular arguments were not atheists, but some form of religious believer. Thus, they argued, the secular argument was, to borrow a phrase, "not their true objection," but a pretextual argument for what was still ultimately religiously-motivated, and thus still barred from influencing the law.
So, it's not just that you have to find non-religious reasons for your preferred policies, it's that sincere religious belief playing any role in them puts them on the "church" side of the divide, to be kept completely away from the state. While, in contrast, your secular humanist can vote their morality, because their morality doesn't involve religion, and thus is perfectly fine being pursued by the state.
Yes, it's all very much an example of the metaphorical 'secularism going from neutral referee in the competition between religions to being a player on the field' transition.
(And, once again, I find myself recommending Winnifred Fallers Sullivan's The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, particularly her conclusion that the only way to make First Amendment religious freedom "work" is by basically reducing it to freedom of conscience plus freedom of worship — you can believe whatever you want about the supernatural, and attend whatever church/synagogue/temple/mosque/etc. you want… but you 'leave it behind at the church door,' as it were, and must behave in accord with broad secular norms outside that.)
I think that the division might be better described, not as 'religious' vs. 'secular' so much as 'metaphysical' vs. 'material'. Material assertions can be settled empirically¹, whereas metaphysical debates are often predicated on diverging axioms, and thus, if placed as support for state policy, tend to lead to bloodshed; the most salient example to the authors of the Bill of Rights being the European Wars of Religion in the XVII Century. The disputants in that example being competing religious institutions led to the principle being phrased in terms of 'separation of church and state'.
To take a different example, imagine two opponents of a nuclear power plant. Alice claims that it will release a metric arse-load of radiation every hour it operates, exposure to the tiniest bit of which will cause eleventy-hundred million cancer deaths; Bob asserts that splitting atoms is a contravention of the natural order, and making human existence easier and less precarious by the provision of abundant energy is an impermissible defiance of the Will of Gaia. Alice's claims can be refuted by measuring the radiation levels outside and inside existing reactor sites with a Geiger Counter, and referring to the health statistics of the inhabitants of Ramsar and Karunagappalli². Bob's argument, however, rests on assumptions (the existence of a natural order which does not include human-built technology; the notion of a personified environment rightfully possessed of an authority outweighing human well-being) which are not amenable to testing by experiment or observation¹, and therefore can only either
(a.) be set aside as not legitimate groundings for state policy (hence 'separation of church and state'), or
(b.) be decided on the battlefield.
The Protestant and Catholic churches in early-modern Europe chose the latter, and caused such devastation, for so little gain, that even fourteen decades later, people knew that allowing the sword of the state to be wielded on behalf of metaphysical assumptions is playing with fire.
¹cf. Newton's Flaming Laser Sword: "What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating."
²Locations in Iran and India with high levels of background radiation and no obvious increase in cancer rates.
The 'secular' arguments I have seen for state non-recognition of same-gender marriage while recognising opposite-gender marriage³ include arguments based on 'complementarity of male and female' (not religious in the narrow sense of "God/the Church/Scripture says so"; nevertheless metaphysical in nature), and arguments relating to parenthood, (entirely material, but do not support discrimination between same-gender couples and opposite-gender couples one or both members of which is entirely infertile.)
If you know of any other secular arguments for the proposition that the state ought to distinguish between 'two men' and 'one man whose testicles have been disconnected and one woman who ran out of eggs ten years ago', I am willing to consider them.
³As opposed to the arguments that the state shouldn't involve itself in marriage at all.
I'd phrase it more as "Do not impose your religious beliefs on people who do not share them."; or as it was put in the 2000s, "Don't tell me I can't have cake because you happen to be on a diet."
Interestingly, many states had laws on the books that some people couldn't marry unless they showed that they were infertile. Namely, close relatives.
This has been trod over time and time again, but people still draw on this silly argument.
Do not impose your atheistic beliefs on people who do not share them.
I don't follow how the first sentence leads to the second.
No one's asking religious people who are against gay marriage to get gay-married against their will.
Yeah, I remember that line. And the companion line about how gay marriage was not going to affect your (straight person's) life at all. Funny how soon it morphed into "bake the cake, bigot!"
Just try the line "hey, if you don't want to own slaves, nobody is forcing you to do so" and see how far it gets with regards to "this law will not impinge on you" and "you can't legislate morality". Owning slaves is bad on the face of it, and we cannot permit people to have their own opinions on whether it's a sin or not, or if they are good, kindly slave owners or not. This is the law and you cannot be an exception to it.
The baker was trying, in a small way, to impose his beliefs on the couple. A hypothetical symmetrical case could be imagined in which 'people being allowed to believe in God and attend religious services' does not affect atheists' lives, even if Mr Euphoric-Fedora, who owns a hotel and sees no difference between religion and psychosis, is expected to provide rooms to religious people on the same terms as he provides to non-believers.
But it impinges on the enslaved persons. There is a difference between 'I am imposing my views on you' and 'I am not allowing you to impose your views on someone else'.
From what I recall of reading the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the proprietor was willing to sell them one of the generic cakes. The issue came up when he was asked to provide one with personalized, theme-appropriate decoration.
Which is to say, to produce an expression of the beliefs the couple had regarding their wedding. And so in that way the couple, too, was attempting to impose their beliefs on him.
Now, it's a very mild sort of imposition I am talking about, of course. That kind of economic incentive to get someone else's expressive faculties dedicated to your cause for a moment is quite common, and in fact it is a good thing that the modern world lets those of us with less training or talent harness the voices of others that way. But it is nonetheless their voice, and many people are leery of forcing someone to say something they disagree with.
For comparison's sake: imagine Mr. Euphoric-Fedora advertises a service where he will leave one of a selection of texts in the hotel drawer if the person renting the room requests it. The local newspaper, or a copy of Godel Escher Bach, or one of several others from his collection. At his discretion he may even purchase a new one if you contact him ahead of time. But he won't put a Bible in it. Is that a failure to "provide rooms to religious people on the same terms as he provides to non-believers"?
A reasonable point, and one which was unfortunately lost in the noise as the pro-equality side either naively pattern-matched¹ the case to one of a business posting a '
WHITESSTRAIGHTS ONLY' sign (or worse, all the businesses in a less tolerant area doing so), or possibly sought to avoid creating a precedent which would allow such an outcome.¹cf. the Rightful Caliph's Meditation on Bingo Cards.
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