How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

No American should be forced to choose between their spouse and their country.

Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit. And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value.

When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses.

I felt, and often still feel, unable to live up to the ideals I really hold.

The Tea Party we were told is only about economics; not true. It was always about economics and social issues. They just hid the social issues and now we just see who they really are.

True belief is not about blind submission. It is about open-eyed acceptance, and acceptance requires persistent distance from the truth, and that distance is doubt. Doubt, in other words, can feed faith, rather than destroy it. And it forces us, even while believing, to recognize our fundamental duty with respect to God's truth: humility. We do not know. Which is why we believe.