How did anyone people miss "the cartoon Mitt Romney doesn't want you to see" the first time it went around? It makes me very uncomfortable to see Democrats raising the issue of any candidate's specific religious belief. Besides, a tape purporting to show a religion's traditional creation and other myths is going to look pretty weird to anyone who doesn't understand its "inner truth" (from the point of view of actual practitioners). All belief systems look strange to those outside them. I mean, would Mike Huckabee look if someone makes a similar cartoon showing the events of Genesis and Revelations exactly as related there? Melissa McEwan of Shakesville nails it.
It's bad enough that presidential candidates are debating the finer points of theology in the first place, but that the debate is supposed to prove who would make a better President of the United States is manifestly preposterous. We have lost the plot, people.
Listen, I don't give a shit if a politician is a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Pagan, a Zoroastrian, a Scientologist, a Pastafarian, or a worshipper of the Great Pumpernickel Loaf from the Eighth Dimension of the Planet Zorgon. All I ask from the people who want my vote is that they not attempt to legislate their personal spiritual beliefs or pen asinine resolutions proclaiming their belief system to be Teh Greatest in Teh Universe!!11!!!--or even "one of the great religions of the world," because you'll never convince me in a million years that a government overtly sanctioning such feelings of supremacy has nothing to do with despicable shit like "Happy Hanukkah" eliciting a beating. (Huckabee's Religious Beliefs Are Just as Wacky as Romney's, So Why Should We Care?)
McEwan addresses the issue from an atheist's perspective, but I am a religious person, and I agree with her on every point. Since I reject both Huckabee's version of Christianity and Romney's, I don't want either to become the basis of policies implemented by the executive branch (as lamentably happened with---just for example---embryonic stem cell research). I don't want to hear about their religion at all.
Your average Democrat doesn't care about the specifics of Romney's Mormon beliefs for the same reason we don't care about the specifics of Harry Reid's Mormon beliefs. All we want---all we ask---is for a commitment from the candidates that they won't try to get their religious beliefs implemented as public policy (as W. certainly did).
Oliver Willis was correct about this: Romney probably would prefer not to let evangelical Christians know about the ways in which Mormon beliefs differ from their own. Unfortunately for Romney, members of his own party with evangelical leanings may well care about the specifics of what he believes because they want the opposite of what I and most Democrats want: they want a president who will press for laws and social agendas that will force our country into the narrow path which they think of (I would beg to differ) as "Christian." So they are going to be keenly interested in the "issue" of which man is more of a "Christian", meaning their sort. And fundamentalists, who take the Bible literally when it suits them, are perfectly capable of picking up a copy of the Book of Mormon if they're really curious. It won't take them long to see the ways in which the story it tells differs from the story they've been told.
This is the dilemma that the GOP has created by its history of pandering to the religious right. Romney's going to have a hard row to hoe. I mean here's Huckabee, already having to apologize for asking a question about Mormonism that Romney had the sense not to answer. That doesn't mean that it won't be answered for him (and not necessarily in ways that are faithful to what Mormons really believe). Doesn't Huckabee believe IN the devil? This is a problem for some people I know---some of whom are Republicans---who don't believe the devil exists. They think when Huckabee talks about the devil he sounds like a looney.
Which is why this whole discussion is just so stupid. Though---again---their own fault. It would never cross my mind to ask Mormon Harry Reid for his views on the devil. For Democrats, it really IS irrelevant.
Memeorandum has more. See also Bark Bark Woof Woof, ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES, Alternate Brain, Brilliant at Breakfast and Clayton Cramer's BLOG
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