There's nothing new about these guys, Jody. They have been part of the American landscape since day one. Even before we became a country, religious intolerance was a part of American life, and it is to the great credit of our founding fathers that they recognized this and gave us a secular constitution and freedom of religion as basic rights.

What is new is the recent development that these religious agendas have now become identified with political ones, and that a certain kind of religiosity has now allied itself with a certain kind of economic and political ideology.

The Bible, in fact, all the holy books of all faiths, contain very little recommendations as to how we should organize ourselves politically or economically. The fact that this is now a political and economic issue is evidence to me that it is a shameless attempt to mobilize religious sentiment as a political tool to achieve economic power.

This is why people like me recoil so instinctively at fundamentalist religion of any denomination. I don't care what myths others organize their lives by, but I am very sensitive to those who seek to organize my life around their myths. If there is a god, he simply does not care whether I am a Liberal or a Conservative.