Guess who else is rushing to protect “oppressed” Christians from the tyranny of the minority and equality under the law? (By the way, a Pew study from 2008 reported that 80 percent of Indiana residents identify as some stripe of Christian.)

Vladimir Putin, who, according to the New York Times, “has made the protection of ‘traditional values,’ including religious values, a pillar of his third term”—including a blasphemy law that “made it a criminal offense to perform public acts that offend believers, punishable by up to three years in prison.”

Making it illegal for nonbelievers to offend believers? Sounds like a law a few of our governors and Republican presidential wannabes could get behind.

Putin’s latest sop to his Orthodox constituency is getting the artistic director of a Siberian theater fired for performing Wagner’s Tannhäuser, which included a new, unorthodox version of the life of Christ.

The Orthodox Church took the artistic director and the opera’s director to court for “offending” their “feelings” in February, prosecutors threw out the charges in March, but the minister of culture fired the artistic director anyway.

The artistic director, Boris Mezdrich, told reporters he found out he was fired “when I met with the First Deputy Minister of Culture Vladimir Aristarkhov, who flew in from Moscow. He handed me the order terminating the contract and appointing Kekhman right there in the airport.”

The Kremlin has denied that it is “the enforcement arm of the Russian Orthodox Church,” but a few days ago, Putin awarded a medal for “service to the homeland” to a priest who helped spearhead the Tannhäuser protests.

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....