You make good points, Ramesh, but there’s still a frame of reference problem here. Your solution apparently requires a split between a believer’s internal commitment to the truth of his particular confession and the language of public argument. That makes a lot of sense politically, but it just transfers the viewpoint problem by creating a split within the believer. The problem here strikes me as closely related to a statement by Cardinal Ratzinger, quoted today by E. J. Dionne. Ratzinger complained that “to have a clear faith according to the church’s creed is today often labeled fundamentalism.” In other words, what to Ratzinger is simply faith in the Church as it has always been is now labeled by secular or religiously liberal outsiders as antiquated and reactionary. I think the ad, by sticking with the simple term, “people of faith,” was refusing to give in to that sort of external definition. In retrospect, this called down a lot more political fury than the authors of the ad bargained for. But I do think they were trying to resist the sort of forced perspective shift Ratzinger was complaining about. Again, I suspect there’s no safe language for any of this–nothing that comes without some political or theological cost. But out of curiosity, what sort of language for an ad do you think might have worked better? How would you have made the point about the religious effect of the viewpoint test being placed on judges in short, snappy, and effective language? Or do you think any such ad campaign was a bad idea?