This program is made possible by the members and donors to the show.

For details, visit the Contribute tab at BestOfAleft.com.

Now, welcome to the award-winning BestOfFleft podcast with clips today from all in with Chris Hayes,

Gay USA, the majority report, throwing shade, this week in blackness, the young Turks and Dan Savage.

And we start today by going back in time ten months to just after the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision

to get the context for the rest of us to come.

Today's extremely polarizing controversial Supreme Court decision is built upon a piece of legislation

that at its time was so uncontroversial, it passed almost unanimously out of the US Senate.

What this law basically says is that the government should be held to a very high level of proof

before it interferes with someone's free exercise of religion.

This judgment is shared by the people of the United States as well as by the Congress.

We believe strongly that we can never, we can never be too vigilant in this work.

Today's Supreme Court decision was not about the First Amendment.

It was about a law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

We all have a shared desire here to protect perhaps the most precious of all American liberties, religious freedom.

Riffra passed Congress with broad bipartisan support and was signed by President Clinton as a direct response

to Supreme Court case argued years earlier.

The Supreme Court takes up the extent to which the law can interfere in religious activities

at issue Native American tribal ritual which involves the use of hallucinogenic drugs.

The case was Employment Division V. Smith, it centered around drugs taken during religious rituals

by two Native Americans.

The hallucinogenic drug peyote comes from a cactus plant and has been used in religious ceremonies

...