I did NOT say your experience was invalid as an experience. I was making the point that it is not typical for the vast majority of American citizens, either on the dishing out or receiving end, and your experience may not be the best filter to judge, for one example, what you think an administration might do just because the people in the administration actually admit to being religious. So yes, when drawing conclusions about the nation as a whole, personal experience is less important than objective data.

I've lived in the Midwest for much of my life, and never ran into the kind of militant visigoths that seem to infect your area. To the best of my knowledge, neither have any of my relatives across flyover country. Your situation seems to be to be kind of like living in San Francisco and wondering why there are so many gays in America.

Like I said, it would be very useful to see widespread surveys about this subject. Who is fundamentalist? How many? How many people have had their rights infringed by local fundamentalists? Inquiring minds want to know. These are not easy questions. A person might be a Creationist, for example, but not be the sort of person who thinks all science books should therefore be changed to match that. A person might belong to a religion that is not normally fundamentalist (Lutheran) yet be a Bible-thumper who harasses the city council every week to stick a cross on top of City Hall and close the bars on Sunday.

Actions count more than beliefs in terms of violating the rights of others to believe as they see fit, or trying to collapse together the concepts of government and religion.

BTW, I don't live in San Francisco, but in Silicon Valley, land of the tiltup, the freeway, the $400,000 townhouse, and dry grass hills. Don't know if I would call it "ecotopia" (a socialist wet dream). I would rather live in the crater of Vesuvius than San Francisco, if only because of the experience of driving a car there, never mind the politics.

Also, I don't recall advising you to move. In fact, I would venture to say you are probably a very healthy influence in your area. And I'm not sure what you think I "advocate."