> No, but they don't seem to so crucial to the politics elsewhere. I had
> in mind Western Europe and Scandinavia, not the rest of the world.
That's because no other country has this rather unique bunch of Christians with rather strange obsessions (including anti-evolutionism, which is a controversy basically non-existent in the rest of the world), who are in such a politically prominent position as they are in the U.S. In fact, Christianity itself is fading away in Western Europe and Scandinavia.
OTOH, Christians in areas such as Africa and Latin America who take the Holy Writ very literally are becoming more and more influential in world Christianity. Apparently, gay marriage is not much of an issue in their countries, but they certainly object very vociferously to Western Christians tolerating gays.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ After the Buddha died, people still kept pointing to his shadow in a cave for centuries—an enormous, dreadful shadow. God is dead: but the way people are, there may be, for millennia, caves in which his shadow is still pointed to. — And we — we must still overcome his shadow! —Friedrich Nietzsche