My father was brought up in an orphanage in the Catskills. He was a factory worker. And because his family wasn't there for him family was everything. We could disagree inside the house but outside the house it was us against the world. So when I became a drag actor he looked sideways but said okay.

Like religion politics and family planning cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

My whole damn family was nice. I don't think I've imagined it. It's true. Maybe it has to do with being brought up as Christian Scientists. Half of my relatives were Readers or Practitioners in the church.

All of us grow up in particular realities - a home family a clan a small town a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born or we are peripherally aware of it.

I've been brought up with the Christian faith with my family.

I was brought up the Mexican way where actors are paid very little and every part you take is an act of faith. If people respect that then great.

Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that.

Well I've never left my faith - but have I made a lot of mistakes? But was I fortunate that I was brought up in that Pentecostal church where I heard about God's love and God's forgiveness.

It's possible that the 2012 general-election race will be the least overtly religious one since 1972 the last campaign before Roe v. Wade and the rise of Jimmy Carter brought evangelicalism into the political mainstream. That's because faith remains a complicated issue for Obama who is still wrongly thought to be a Muslim in some quarters.

Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.