Life during wartime

I grew up in Huntington Beach, on the northern fringe of Orange County-behind the fabled "Orange Curtain." It was only natural that I ended up conservative and Republican, in that order. Of course, it has been thoroughly enjoyable watching the ongoing self-flagellation by Democrats in the wake of Bush's triumph.
It has been very difficult to refrain from gloating. However, in the afterglow, I continue to wonder just why my liberal friends persist in paranoia. Specifically, I have several friends who simply refuse to acknowledge the possibility that born-again, evangelical types might not be one step removed from the Taliban.
I don't know any born-again Christians, but I have met a few people since I moved to Chicago who are serious about their faith to a degree I have never seen, not even in the land of the Crystal Cathedral. They don't seem terribly eager to push for legislation demanding that women lose their footwear and return to the kitchen to cook turkey pot pie for their lords. Yet the commentary from my liberal friends implies as much, and I simply cannot understand why. The only potential explanation I have concluded is that they see Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and those kooks who show up at every major gay rights activity with their "God hates Fags" signs and assume that not only do these men seek to impose an ersatz form of sharia here in the U.S., but also that these individuals are representative of the entire evangelical movement.
And yet, these are the same liberal friends who always get pissy about the SF Chronicle showing pictures of the more outrageous groups in the Gay Pride parade on the grounds that "the photos misrepresent the majority of the gay population."
If the majority of the gay population is a lot more, well, normal than the gangs of bull dykes, leather fetishists and drag queens regularly depicted in the SF Comical, than why is it so difficult to consider that the majority of evangelicals may not be slavish followers of Pat Robertson who demand nothing but Ozzie & Harriett on TV and a return to Victorian morality in other matters?
A little more tolerance and further exercise of the allegedly greater mental capacity of blue-state residents would be appreciated here.