It is, I guess, because I am not religious that I am so covetous, particularly, of religious people. The neighbour's ass I can just about do without, but I do have religious envy. Just think of the mental energy you would save by being religious. Aside from no longer having to justify celebrating Christmas with tedious excuses of the "it's actually a pagan winter holiday, you know" variety, there would be no more angst about what's right and what's wrong, and all backed up by the delicious glow of sanctimony on which religion acts like oxygen on fire.

What one saves in mental energy, one makes up for in creative theories of causation and human behaviour. This brings us to Michele Bachmann and Nadine Dorries, two women separated by an ocean, but currently the darlings of the Christian right in their respective countries.

Bachmann has something of a head start on Dorries because the Christian right defines the current Republican party to the point that virulent homophobia is seen as a political qualification by the majority of its presidential candidates. These folk have had much to say about the Biblical weather inflicted upon America's elitist east coast in recent days: earthquakes, a hurricane, hair-destroying humidity – oh God, why hast thou forsaken us? Michele Bachmann knows the answer!

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said: 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' ... We've got to rein in the spending," she bellowed. Which was interesting because I thought the earthquake – which occurred hours after all charges were dropped against Dominique Strauss-Kahn – was God trying to shake some sense into New York. But that's the funny thing about religion – for all of its hardline rules, you can make it mean pretty much whatever you like. Which explains how a religion that advocates compassion can, by some of its followers, be seen as advocating hate towards those of a different sexual inclination.

Bachmann has now joined the noble ranks of Messiah-based meteorologists, the chief of whom is evangelical Christian Pat Robertson, a man who sees God where others see natural disasters. He famously claimed the terrible earthquake in Haiti last year was a punishment on the people from God and he inevitably saw something religious in last week's earthquake, saying that the crack it caused in the Washington monument "means that we're closer to the coming of the Lord". And there I was thinking it was just God making a giant metaphor about how the American political system is bust.

Weather issues aside, one doesn't need to be Richard Dawkins to find the application of religious beliefs to public policy abhorrent, and in this respect I have long envied my British friends. They, surely, live in a far too sceptical country to see that happen in the 21st century, a country in which 76% of the population is pro-choice, unlike in America where only 49% is. And then, along came Nadine.

Nadine Dorries has been much in the news of late. This self-described pro-choice politician has been attempting to set back women's reproductive rights by at least 20 years. Proving that one can make things mean whatever you want them to, Dorries claims this is about women's rights, when it seems precisely about taking them away.

She has claimed that women are often "traumatised" by abortions, but doesn't explain how traumatising it is to go through with an unwanted pregnancy. Nor does she explain how pregnancy-counselling centres run by faith-based and anti-abortion organisations are more independent of an agenda than the abortion providers themselves. According to a recent undercover investigation by a pro-choice charity, the counselling in some of these centres ranges from the scaremongering to downright inaccurate. One only need look at the Christian right's campaign against Planned Parenthood in America to see the old cliche about America sneezing and Britain's ensuing sinus problems proven.

To see British politicians adopting the Christian right's misogynistic and anti-sex attitudes is frankly terrifying; a lot scarier – funnily enough – than the thought of an earthquake sent from God.

Whose problem is it anyway? Guardian readers, I bring you grave news. Your advice is officially feebler than – oh cruel, cruel world! – that of the Daily Mail. And unlike Nadine Dorries, I can proffer hard evidence.

We turn to the Daily Mail's advice column, MC'd by Bel Mooney, who proves her impeccable credentials for advising readers about their lives by that time-honoured method of advice columnists: holding her finger against her ear in her byline photo. Like Frasier Crane, Bel is listening.

This week's correspondent was Ellie, 21, and her concerns were that she had recently become obsessed with a man online and that she was currently sleeping with her brother's friend, who is 29, whom she didn't much fancy. Hmm, I mused, tapping my finger to my ear, how oddly familiar this sounded. And then I realised why: a few weeks ago a letter appeared in this paper's Private Lives column from a woman who was obsessed with a man online and was simultaneously sleeping with her brother's friend, 29, for whom she doesn't care. Guardian readers, as they are wont to do, proffered plenty of advice online.

Now, one could argue that perhaps Ellie did a mass mailout to begin with, spreading her bets. But the time gap between the two columns makes it more likely that she rejected the Guardian readers' tips and went for the Daily Mail big guns. Really, it's enough to make one turn to a newspaper columnist for life guidance.