By CLIFF DUNN

My partner and I were watching a movie the other night. I can’t recall which one, or what it was about, but one thing that stood out was the signage. By this, I refer to signs being carried by one side in the “conflict” that was being dramatized (although whether that conflict was a military battle or an abortion rights protest, memory doesn’t serve): “GOD Sees!” or something similarly evocative.

During all this, my boyfriend turned to me and asked —half innocently, half archly—something to the effect of “How do their opponents [or whatever] feel about God supporting the other side?” to which I replied “God is ALWAYS on both sides.”

From the Crusaders’ cry “Deus vult!” (Latin: “It is the will of God!”), to the Germans’ First and Second World War refrain “Gott mit uns!” (“God [is] with us!”), has there ever been a conflict where human blood was shed that divine favor wasn’t invoked by both sides? Even in the Age of Classical Greece, the Trojans and their Hellenic enemies managed to divvy up the Divine Olympians like pre-Bronze Age kickball teams (“Apollo, you’re on the Trojans side, Poseidon, you’re with us. Zeus, you’re Trojan, Hephaestus, Greek.”).

In the modern era, this translates to the American brand of political fundamentalism which has by and large held the GOP hostage since the Reagan Era—from around 1980 to the present—when they abandoned Jimmy Carter (who, unlike Reagan, was actually one of them) and the Democrats to set up a state-withina- state in the Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. This was much as the Wahhabi mullahs did with the Saudi royal family, who turn a blind eye to the more egregious actions of the Islamic sect’s religious police in the interest of keeping their grip on power. Talk about your deals with the Devil.

For the un- (or under-) educated, it would appear that this was always the state of affairs—that religious conservatives held one party or the other to a litmus test of where their candidates stood on DOMA, DADT, ENDA, SNDA, and other “alphabet soup” legislation. They did this with an eye to seeing how mighty a warrior they are in the Cultural War as defined by Pat Buchanan, who held a vice grip upon the bloviating bullhorn of the Socio-Political Right until he became too embarrassing for even that tolerant group of souls. Funny thing, it wasn’t always like this. No one asked John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential campaign where he stood on abortion rights.

The landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized reproductive freedom for women wouldn’t be decided until nine years and two months to the day after his assassination. Before Roe v. Wade, the states decided such matters, so Kennedy was spared the battle that another JFK from Massachusetts would not be, two dozen years later, when John F. Kerry was required to incant the formula that would label him “safe” in the eyes of the left, and the enemy in the eyes of the Religious Right.

Compare that to the 1960s and 1970s, when Idaho—today one of the reddest of red states—consistently elected a liberal Democrat, Frank Church, to the U.S. Senate.

From 1958 to 1976, Utah elected Democrat Frank Moss, who promoted legislation that protected consumers and the environment, worked tirelessly to ban tobacco ads from TV and radio, and sponsored toy safety, product safety, and poison prevention measures that would be unheard of in the modern Beehive State.

It isn’t that Idahoans and Utahans are any less conservative today than they were then. It’s that the argument has shifted away from the common sense things that need to get done (like resurfacing I-95), to hot button topics that generate tons of political contributions (and vitriol), and the sensible political center has literally failed to hold.

Ironically, it is these religious and cultural conservatives who may do the most lasting harm to Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations, as their intolerance for the “different” crosses paths with Romney’s Latter Day Saint (Mormon) religion, which departs from the canon of “mainstream” fundamentalist and Protestant Christianity in so many ways that many theologians consider it a separate religion—when they aren’t referring to it as a cult.

These members of the Right may find it hard to build much enthusiasm for someone—Romney—that they suspect is just a little too tolerant of “the gays,” resulting in middling turnout in the places his candidacy will be counting the most on a strong showing.

This—coupled with the fact that not all Christians in America are socially conservative, and that those who are remain far from being in love with Romney—could prove to be an opportunity for Obama. And hopefully for us as well.