Liberals don’t mind when Democrats insist their policies are motivated by religion.

Jonah Goldberg notes that Liberals are outraged when a Republican tells us that his faith is important to him.  That means they are "ayatollahs" ...

Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker, for instance, was outraged — at Ryan. To say that faith informs everything you do is “disturbing and scary,” Gopnik insisted. “That’s a shocking answer — a mullah’s answer, what those scary Iranian ‘Ayatollahs’ he kept referring to when talking about Iran would say as well.”

When a Democrat says that his faith informs his political views, it's a different matter.

I strongly doubt that Gopnik and the rest of the faith-fearing liberals mind when progressive figures insist their policies are motivated by religion. President Obama routinely waxes biblical in his view of government: “I am my brother’s keeper,” he has said repeatedly. It is, to be sure, an odd recasting of the Bible, since Cain’s question to God — “Am I my brother’s keeper?” — was simply an attempt to dodge a murder rap. But he is invoking his faith nonetheless. And Nancy Pelosi says her Catholic faith “compels” her to support gay marriage. Really.

It might be that secular liberals aren’t offended by all this because they think Catholic Democrats are simply lying. That’s probably true in some cases, but it’s surely unfair in others. Biden seems sincere when he says he’s a faithful liberal Catholic. And that’s forgivable so long as he remembers that the “liberal” comes first in “liberal Catholic.”

 

I think that's essentially correct.  Liberals have Liberalism as their God, they only go to church for show and pretend to believe in a God to fool the rubes in flyover country.  Gopnik understands that lie and is perfectly fine with it.