It has become some sort of rule, some sort of perfectly delicious law of the popular culture upon which any open-minded and attuned and humor-licked and spiritually aware and intellectually curious and sexually alive human worth her moist, wine-massaged soul can now rely with utter and perfect clarity.

It goes like this: If there is some sort of creation, a piece of art, a TV show, a column or a book or a movie or a statue or a blog or a movement, a wine bottle or sexual position or Jesus-shaped dildo that somehow deeply threatens the various ultraconservative sects of Christian-blasted America to the point where their pale, dour representatives demand boycotts and distribute angry pamphlets and try to stop people from experiencing said hunk of culture because of how negatively it portrays their seething, condemnatory God, well, you know it's time to break out the Champagne. Or buy that book. Or get very, very naked. Or all of the above. Depending.

So it is with the first movie made from Philip Pullman's astonishing "His Dark Materials" trilogy, "The Golden Compass," a complex, mystically gorgeous, spiritually dense, big-budget fantasy epic so far removed from the cute wizardry of Harry Potter and the thin, simpleminded Christian morality of say, "The Chronicles of Narnia," it might as well be a Coen brothers movie. On acid.

Oh my God yes, they are protesting. They are pamphleting. The Catholic League and Focus on the Family and evangelical/fundamentalist Christian blogs from here to Colorado Springs, they are calling on their trembling armies to boycott the film because they believe that Pullman's brilliant books — which, by the way, if I had the power, I would place in the eager and lovely hands of every youngish human on the planet right now, but especially the girls — are not only aggressively anti-Christian, they ultimately describe, as their grand finale, nothing less than the death of God. This is what they say.

And here is the terrific thing: They are absolutely right.

But let's be a bit more specific, shall we? Because as any fan of HDM knows, it ain't really about God, per se. Pullman's luminous novels have nothing to do with rejecting faith or destroying the spirit or inhibiting the exploration of what it means to be divine. They are, in fact, the exact opposite. They relish spirit and the magic of belief and love, are soaked through with divine inspiration of a kind any intelligent Christian (or honest spiritual seeker of any stripe, for that matter) should crave the way Lindsay Lohan craves cocaine. This is what makes them so incredible.

No, the nefarious thing the books aim to kill is, well, religious authority. It's about the destruction of dogma. It's about power, about who wants to control and manipulate life on Earth; it is about blind, ignorant, even violent adherence to insidiously narrow codes of thought and belief and behavior, sex and desire and love.

This, of course, is the God of organized religion. This is the false deity that promotes numb groupthink and inhibits growth and abhors the feminine divine (perhaps the books' most beautiful, inspiring theme), the same paranoid, dreadful God that votes for George W. Bush because, well, he will smite the icky gays and protect us from vile pagans and Buddhists and Muslims and feminists and frumpy genius atheist British writers.

Indeed, if humanity is to flourish, to get over its addiction to war and guilt and fear, this is the false God that should — that must — die.

But let us get more specific still. Because while the books have as their evil antagonist a sinister cabal called the Magisterium (obvious parallel: Catholic Church), they also have a slew of dark characters in service of the Magisterium, various assassins and double-agents and robot drones running around trying to annihilate the children's spirit and destroy magic and lock down faith forever. Let us call these robotic drones, oh, say, the Catholic League. Or Focus on the Family. Gosh, no wonder they're a little peeved.

Ah, but it's almost too easy, is it not? Even a child can see that these people, these groups are so far from true spirit, so far from open consciousness it's a bit like comparing a lint ball to a cloud bank, a dung beetle to a flower bed. They are spiritual caricatures, the creepy clowns in organized religion's gloomy circus, all scrunched brows and gnarled hands and so much repressed sexuality it would make a porn star wince. Really, why give their silly protests any attention at all?

Well, for one thing, because these groups have proven they can be highly dangerous, utterly toxic to the culture as a whole. You already know the list: FCC crackdowns, stem cell research, ultraconservative judges, abstinence education, anti-choice laws, vicious homophobia, intelligent design, the rejection of science, all aiming toward nothing less than the creation of a fascist theocracy in America.

In fact, director Chris Weitz, who adapted "The Golden Compass" for the screen, reportedly removed any direct mentions of God or religion from the film version, fearing, along with New Line Cinema, some sort of Christian conservative backlash. Fans were, appropriately, outraged. It remains to be seen how much of those vital themes Weitz left intact, but you could argue that the Bible-thumpers have already taken their sad toll.

(But oh, I do look forward to the bloodcurdling screams that will surely come from these groups when they see the third film, which, if the creators hold at all true to the original book, and presuming the movie gets made at all, features a truly luminous pair of wonderful, immensely powerful, tragic gay angels. Oh my yes).

It might not matter. With any luck and if "The Golden Compass" turns out to be even half as wondrous as the book, it will hopefully fuel a massive surge in sales of the HDM trilogy in America, and perhaps inspire an entirely new literary awakening among young readers, deeper and darker and more luminous and complex and even (gasp) slightly sexual, far beyond the clever but innocuous magic of Harry Potter — which, by the way, had its share of religious bonk-jobs calling for its destruction, as wizardry is clearly the dominion of the devil. We all know what a huge drop in sales that protest caused.

But there is another note of good news, another terrific takeaway from this tale of fear and whining and outcry, and it takes the form of another delightful rule upon which your soul can happily rely, as well as a heartfelt lesson for trembling ultraconservative sects everywhere.

It goes like this: If your ancient, authoritarian, immutable belief system is truly threatened by a handful of popular novels, if your ostensibly all-powerful, unyielding creed is rendered meek and defenseless when faced with the story of a fiery, rebellious young girl who effortlessly rejects your stiff misogynistic religiosity in favor of adventure, love, sex, the ability to discover and define her soul on her own terms, well, it might be time for you to roll it all up and shut it all down and crawl back home, and let the divine breathe and move and dance as she sees fit. Don't you agree?

Mark Morford's latest book is 'The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism'. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. His website is markmorford.com. For his yoga classes, workshops and retreats, click markmorfordyoga.com.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate, and is frequently cross-posted to Huffington Post. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list, click here and remove three more.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.