I attended a Coming Out Group in Southern California for some five years, while I was dealing with my issue of being gay. Why this is relevant to the issue of Mormonism and Mitt Romney is that over those years,I was struck by how many of the youngest members of the group were Mormons. All of these young men and women were well educated with Degrees or even advanced Degrees and an absolute fear of being ostracized by their families because they were gay. Some were already out and trying to cope with the reality of being, now, outside that circle of religious life,because they dared to unapologetically declare their sexuality. What was worse was watching each one of these fine young people,struggling with that rejection, from family members that had once thought so highly of them, even professed to love them. It was emotionally wrenching to watch this unnecessary suffering. My comment is purely anecdotal, but five years is quite a length of time to see this seemingly endless flow of unhappy children, always telling the same story, though with small variations. Add to this the Mormon Church’s funding of Prop 8 in California. Please,don’t ask me why I have a prejudice against the Mormon Church, because I’ve seen up close the suffering of those who didn’t fit the mold of the good LDS member, and its emotional costs, for the non-conformists: the rest is framed in the bullshit apologetics of ‘Religious Tolerance’. The motto of the good LDS member is conformity to the rules as laid down by a sclerotic theocracy.

If you think you’ve seen narrow-minded politicians before Romney, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I grew up in South-Central Idaho, which is solidly Mormon. It’s a lot like being in Salt Lake City, where if you want a job, you’d better be able to remember which Ward and Stake you belong to, and what your elder’s names are. If you can’t, you don’t go to work, not anyplace meaningful, anyway.

I was living in Vernal, Utah, over the course of a winter, and I applied for a job at a local motel as their maintenance manager after an ad appeared in the local paper. I had several years of experience as a maintenence manager, all documented and in good standing, but was passed over for the job because somebody important’s nephew was just getting back from his Mission (a forced period of religious solicitation thrust upon the male members of the church after High School, lasting two or three years), and he was given the job instead of me.

He had no work experience at all, none—-but he was a good Mormon boy, and that was enough to qualify him for a job I had years of experience doing. During my interview, I was casually asked which Ward and Stake I belonged to, a question they aren’t supposed to ask, to which I replied that I did not attend. That was the end of the interview, and the job.

Mormons are very one-way about this, and they put the members of their faith first in all things (providing they’re not black or female). It’s an insider’s religion, one concocted recently by the standards of history, and has little to do with worship and more to do with making the Mormon Church wealthy and powererful. The church owns Zions’ Bank outright, along with a number of other choice moneymaking enterprises. These are the legislators that have determined that those who are not Utah’s Mormons should be the ones who pay for those huge Mormon families to attend school. It’s all funded with taxes on things that Mormons don’t use—-alcohol, tobacco, etc. They are called “sin taxes” by those upon which they have been inflicted.

If this is the way you want this country run, by all means, vote for this guy’s church—-you don’t get him without also getting Mormonism shoved down your throat.

There is reason to be troubled when any politician marches religion into the public square and/or panders to the faith-based faction.

There particular reason to be concerned when it is THEY who make faith a “religious test”.

It’ especially disgusting when those who make faith a test then have the audacity to whine that they are being subjected to a ‘religious test’ when it is THEY who have put it in issue.

And see also “American Politics Under The Corporate Banner of Heaven” at Open Salon.com http://open.salon.com/blog/f_arouete/2011/10/15/american_politics_under_the_corporate_banner_of_heaven

Very fair article, Joe; congratulations.  It would have been easy to take cheap
shots at such a target; but your shots were of the civil kind. 

As for the comments by various Christian spokesmen for the ‘religious right’
about Romney’s religion: they need to take a deeper look at their own set of
beliefs.  The pot and the kettle come to mind.

Disclaimer: I was born into the ‘Mormon’ Church, and flirted with it, off and on,
for many years, until reading my way out of it.  But yes, they are basically good
people, and would never think to fasten a theocracy on America, because they
are firm believers in the founding principles of the Republic, and the rule of
law.  And Rev. Unruh: i am very sorry to hear what took place regarding your
people in 1857.  Like many Christians, those of that terrible day should have
paid greater heed to the teaching of their faith regarding vengeance.

Mr. Conason, I see no point in white washing an oft white
washed sepulchre. Mormonism has been white washed from
within and without so often that the white wash is all
that holds the sepulchre together.

Still, the sepulcre is filled with dead men’s bones.

We can go through the list of reasons to condemn
Mormonism. An old joke fits Mormonism. The one with the
line, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” In
Mormonism’s case of course one must say, “Have you
stopped beating your wiveS?” And in this case the
allusion is the idea that just because the Mormons say
they stopped polygamy does not mean: 1) that they did
stop nor, 2) that just because you stop doing a thing
does not mean you are not a doer of the thing still at
heart.

Some commentator said recently, “Mormonism is a
business.”

Mormonism from the beginning transferred responsibility
and empathy from the harbor of the spiritual to the
market madness of the corporate.

This is a parallel of exactly what conservatism has been
trying to do from the beginning. They have been trying
move empathy and responsibility from the dutiful exercise
of government through privatization, moving empathy and
responsibility to the insidious madness and depravity of
a laissez-faire market whose pews are filled with masters
of deceit and gluttons of greed.

I am surprised no one is selling T-shirts that say:
IT IS NOT THAT MORMONS ARE NOT CHRISTIANS
IT IS THAT MORMONS ARE NOT PROGRESSIVES

All Mormons are Republicans.

The verbal poster child for the definition of oxymoron is
the term Mormon democracy. We could coin a a term and
call it oxyMorMon.

Those who analyze instead of proselytize would go mad
trying to choose between a fundamentalist Christian and a
Mormon to run the executive branch of a democracy.

Because, set aside the massacres and mayhem, the depraved
behaviour that indicates neither knows the first thing
about Christ or sainthood, whether earlier or latter,
what remains is that both the Mormon and the Christian
are bound to their religions whether the religion as it
is codified or the religion as displayed by depraved
followers.

Being bound to their religions neither can execute the
office of president without heeding their own corrupt
creation, their own particular bastardization of
beatifics.

Do these embarassments of humanity not realize how
translucent they are? No. They are comforted by the
reality that to their own kind they appear as perfect
marble headstones. But to anyone else, for example a
clear headed progressive they are now and forever white
washed sepulcres.

And Obama hasn’t demonstrated “shape-shifting policies” and “hollow
dissembling?” 

I don’t think Romney could outdo Obama on either.  Perhaps Obama’s penchant
for both will cost him the election . . .

That is, if there’s not a Syrian invasion to bring down Assad or complicity with
Israel’s aggression towards either Syria or Iran , which would have catastrophic
implications.  Obama has demonstrated the capacity to allow either.

I trust no man who’s wearing his religion on his sleeve, especially if there’s a flag pin on his lapel.

I beg to differ with the author:
When a man says “GOD did not intend for this country…” he makes his religion a cause for concern.

Or perhaps Mitt has a red telephone hard-wired to God and talks with him each day?

Amen brother, braze the chicken and boil the tea bag(gers) 
Well written and argued.