Ramesh, I think there’s a linguistic problem here because people are coming to the ad from two frames of reference. Let me give an example. If FRC had said the president’s nominees are being blocked because they’re “traditional Christians,” I think that would have been right. This covers what you meant when you said that “many Democrats are enforcing a viewpoint test for judicial office that has the effect of screening out Catholics and many evangelical Protestants who are faithful to their churches’ teaching about abortion.” But an advertisement directed at “traditional Christians” would not be likely to use a phrase like “traditional Christians.” Traditional Christians would be much more likely to call themselves, to themselves, “people of faith.” Let me give a related example. Folks who belong to the marriage movement are very queasy about the term “traditional marriage.” That tends to weaken the institution by implying that marriage as we’ve always known it is just one of a menu of possible types of marriage. But the advent of “gay marriage,” makes it hard not to need a phrase like “traditional marriage.” Similarly, FRC would have avoided this problem if they’d said that the nominees’ opponents are discriminating against “traditional Christians.” But that phrasing would have implied that traditional Christianity was merely one (perhaps outdated) choice on a menu of choices about how to be a Christian, and that would have put off the target audience of the ad. In effect “traditional Christians” need to describe themselves one way when addressing each other, and a different way when addressing the world at large. I think FRC was focused on its target audience, without realizing that an ad phrased this way would draw such scrutiny from secularists and non-traditional Christians. No doubt, the phrase I just used, “non-traditional Christians,” causes problems with many or most non-evangelical Christians. But that’s the point. There’s no safe language that describes this dispute to both religious insiders and outsiders. The problem of language aside, however, I agree with Hugh Hewitt’s excellent posts, which I’ve been reading. The fundamental point of the ad stands.