What began 20 years ago as a bipartisan drive to protect the rights of people to follow their faith against an overbearing government erupted this week into a divisive dispute over gay rights and religious freedom.

And the fracture can be traced back to two recent moves by the Supreme Court that set up an unusual legal crosscurrent between liberals and conservatives.

By overturning a key provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, the court set in motion a string of rulings across the nation that voided state laws banning same-sex marriage. By this June, a majority of justices is widely expected to legalize gay marriage nationwide.

At the same time, the Supreme Court ruled in another case last year that the family owners of the Hobby Lobby craft-store chain had a religious-liberty right to refuse to offer contraception coverage for its employees.

So while the marriage ruling opened the door for expanded protections for gays and lesbians, the Hobby Lobby decision offered new tools for those opposed to such moves.

Conservatives applauded the 5-4 Hobby Lobby ruling, which was based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed by President Clinton in 1993. The law originally aimed to protect the Amish, Native Americans and others whose religious practices ran afoul of local or state laws says the "government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion."

But the court's conservative majority defined "person" to include profit-making companies. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking for the liberal dissenters, called it a "decision of startling breadth" that gives "commercial enterprises, including corporations" a right to ignore laws that conflict with their owners' religious views.

Armed with the Hobby Lobby ruling and concerned that their statewide bans against same-sex marriage were in danger, conservative lawmakers in Indiana, Arkansas and other states adopted their own versions of the federal religious-freedom law.

Some conservatives hoped the 1993 law would protect religious-minded individuals and businesses from legal mandates on gay marriage that they said would violate their faith. The most commonly cited example was a religious baker who did not want to be forced to make a cake for a gay wedding.

Using the Hobby Lobby precedent, some states broadened the scope of the federal religious-liberty law which dealt with conflicts between the government and individuals and defined a protected person to include a business, company or corporation. That small change created a large concern.

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Backlash against religious freedom laws helps gay rights in Indiana, Arkansas