Rinslinger, I would agree with you on that as far as the political process goes. Outside of the political process,though, you will never derail the fundamentalist religious sectors in society...anymore than you will derail the sectors who happen to like football...or really loud music....or marijuana...or anything else you could care to mention.

It's a matter of free choice, and some people in a society freely choose to be religious in the way that you don't like, and they always will.

But yes, I would like to see them exerting far less influence on the American election process! ;-)

You'd like Canada a lot. The religious right here commands, oh, I'd say about 1 or 2 per cent of the vote here at the most...and they have no discernable effect on our political election process. They are virtually invisible. There are people who run here on a "Christian Heritage Party" ticket. They will get maybe fifty or a hundred votes in a town of 35,000 people...all from their local church congregation, I guess.

And that's at the most.

Any yet, I suspect that a majority of Canadians nonetheless believe in God or in something spiritual in their own particular way....but that does NOT result in a political movement like the religious right in the USA. The American religious right is an extraordinary phenomenon. I don't think it has any parallel in any other country in the developed world. It's one of the very oddest things about the USA. It's shocking from the perspective of people in most other developed countries.