They only seem inconsequential if you haven't internalized the idea that they apply to anything real.

My subjective impression is that most moderately religious people in industrialized countries haven't. Otherwise, when relatives drop out of the faith, you would expect to see them get daily evangelical phone calls, rather than frosty silence.

Likewise parenting and politics -- there are 10 partisan hacks who have trouble making friends with people of the opposite party for every 1 activist who actually leaves her county to do some electioneering. You hear a lot about parents who don't want their kid associating with what they see as the children of unduly (lax / anal-retentive) parents, and these people might urgently defend their views at, e.g., a dinner party, but you rarely hear of campaigns where a parent goes around trying to convince all her closest friends (let alone the whole community) that X parenting style ruins kids' lives. Hell, people usually don't even do that when they think mercury in vaccines causes autism.

People believe that they believe that parenting, politics, and religion have consequences, but they don't actually believe it. That's my opinion, anyway.