The Democratic Party: Hezb No Allah?

Good article at the Spectator about religion in politics:

The dirty little secret of Democrat party politics is that secularists fill a role very similar to the one occupied by evangelicals on the Republican side. They are becoming a reliable voting bloc. There is a far larger religion gap than there is a gender gap, but only the latter has been extensively covered. Christian fundamentalism is frequently emphasized, but secularism is completely missed. It has only been in the most recent election cycle (2006) that the "God gap" has received significant attention and then it was to emphasize that religious voters were coming back to the Democratic party. Coverage has typically been short on attention to secularists, focusing instead on the movement of religious voters.Political scientists Gerald De Maio and Louis Bolce have pointed out that one never hears about how the Democrats "have shorn up their base among the unchurched, atheists, and agnostics." Nevertheless, when you see evolution suddenly become a persistent issue in presidential debates, something very much like that shoring up is happening. Markers are being set out. "Stay away from this wicked person, my son. He has inadequate respect for the marriage of molecules and random chance."