In poker, at the end of each hand, the winner "lays their cards out on the table" to show they've won. Since part of the game of poker is to try to disguise your hand from the other players, when the winning hand is laid on the table, this reveals facts that previously have been hidden or even deliberately lied about (through bluffing) by the players.
This leads to a common idiom, "lay your cards on the table" to mean showing your actual capabilities. In a negotiation, this idiom can mean revealing your actual wants and what you're willing to give in return.
The idiom is also used in a more general form, "lay [something] on the table" and with a broader meaning, to reveal things that are hidden or simply to speak plainly.
In your examples, there are people who might not normally reveal their true beliefs, and the writers are using the idiom of putting them "out on the table" to mean expressing those beliefs openly.
"On the Table" also means for something to be subject to discussion or consideration by a group. In the written example you provided, the characters views about premarital sex were "on the table". I would infer this is not a subject matter they speak often about.
When you launch a business you have to think about many things—a long list of things.
Every time you encounter a new problem, you add it to the list. The list is longer by one, and you have one thing more or one more thing to think about. And
Each time you are able to cross something off that list, the list grows shorter by one. That’s one thing less or one less thing you have to think about.
Best Answer
Normally, a question like this might be closed as entirely answerable by a dictionary. However, this particular phrase might be very hard to find in a dictionary, so I don't think this particular question fits that close reason.
This is an informal, shortened form for getting on someone's back. This idiom is defined by Macmillan as:
So, we could express your sentence as:
but sometimes the on my back might be shortened even further: