To me fundamentalist christians believe the bible to be exactly God's word. That women experience pain during childbirth because Eve took the apple from the tree and gave it Adam. That the the world is roughly 12,000 years old. That the bible condemns homosexuality, which it doesn't. Things like this.
The problem is when you take these quaint traditions, and superstitions and try and apply them to everyone else under the sun. I'm really feel sorry that same-sex marriage and evolution make mid-westerners feel icky, but those are the breaks. I don't particuliarly like that schools teach sex-education, but I understand that some parents, for whatever reason, feel like it needs to be taught there so you just let it go.