These kinds of questions--compared to ticking the "Christian" box in a census--get beyond how people loosely identify themselves (affiliation), and get to the core of what people actually believe and how they behave as a result of their belief (practice). These indicators give a much more accurate picture of belief in America.

Where does the charge of bigotry come from? Is it just a passing fad, a political and social tool for power and control, or do its roots go deeper?

John is male-sexed. John either has hands (because of being somebody) or does not have hands (despite being somebody). Either way, hands are a part of a whole - if we were to find a hand in the street, we would say "somebody is missing a hand" not "some hand is missing a body". Just as each part of John's body has a nature and is signified through a name, so it is with the whole of his body - his sex. To take away John's sex we would need to take away his whole body, leaving nobody.

He's right. Our priorities are upside down -- and in sharp contrast to our allies. The U.S. gun murder rate is 50 times that of Germany. Japan had just 11 gun homicides. There were only 44 gun murders in Great Britain in 2012, a nation one-fifth our size. If the U.S. had the same proportion of gun murders there would be only 220 -- not 11,583.