Some of us, probably more than are willing to admit, have grown tired of all this religious dickering and bickering in our political process. Another story on Salon said it best when they said "nonbelievers have long been more tolerant of believers in office than the other way around." Well, it's time for the believers to stop ruining democracy for the rest of us by shoving all their variations on Christian theme down our throats!

I want my government WITHOUT a religious bent, thank you. Since none of you can prove you have the right religion, and since you all seem to fight over your religious intolerances often causing millions of deaths over generations, you all should just shut up and sit down! Practice whatever you choose - key word here is "choose" - and leave the rest of us alone.

I want my elected officials to be honest, to uphold the U.S.Constitution (not a religous relic or symbol of their faith), to enforce the laws of the land, to do what they say they are going to do, to work with others to solve our very serious problems, to make government work better for all of us, to restore this country's credibility, and to leave me alone. Sorry, but those candidates wearing their religious fervor on their shoulders seem to not be able to do any of these things. They only care about pandering to their loud, shrill, intolerant constitutency.

Whatever weird stuff Romney believes (or pretends to believe) as a Mormon, what did he DO as governor?

As governor of Massachussets Romney was a moderate Republican in outlook and a technocrat in practice. He made a splash attacking the entrenched state Democratic machine and trying to push a soft-core Reaganite agenda of tax cuts offset by cuts in social spending. He did some damage that way but his worst excesses were curbed by the legislature — a conclusion so foregone, given the Democrats' power, that it's hard to tell if Romney was sincere in his efforts or just trying to score Republican Points.

At his best he knew how to get together the brightest people in a given area of policy and let them do their thing, which led to some innovative, progressive, and undeniably "big government" policies coming out of his administration — in education and technology, among other areas. He also served the extremely valuable purpose of holding a fire to the feet of the Democratic machine — I guess the idea was to try to forge a lasting place for Republicans at the table but the result was merely to shake the cruft off of the state Democratic party and thus revitalize it in a way that Democrats themselves would probably have not been able to for another generation.

I don't recall that he ever discussed religion.

Since the discussion here I've thought more about Romney as a cipher — maybe it was inevitable that in a blue state he would serve as an agent of liberal renaissance rather than conservative uprising. If that's the case — that Romney inevitably serves the greater good of whatever political culture he's currently marinading in — then his present direction is disturbingly indicative of how he'd govern as president.

The Article 6 prohibition of a religious “test” for United States office-holders is almost as anachronistic a part of the Constitution as the 2nd Amendments “guarantee” of gun rights. Yes, of course the Founding Fathers were comfortable proscribing a religious test; at the time they were surrounded by an unthreatening blend of mild variations on Protestantism. While undoubtedly the Calvinists and the Baptists found much to disagree about, they had far more in common that united them against papism, its clone, the Church of England and certainly the more exotic religions. Does anyone seriously believe that if there had been free, white Catholics or Jews in the colonies – much less Mormons, had they and their peculiar brand of beliefs existed in 1787 -- of sufficient substance to mount a political campaign, that the Constitution would not have featured either specific bars to their entry into the political arena, or at least that the prohibition of a religious test would have gone conspicuously missing?

In response to Tilda...this from one of the internet dictionary sites:

"Usage Note: Till and until are generally interchangeable in both writing and speech, though as the first word in a sentence until is usually preferred: Until you get that paper written, don't even think about going to the movies. Till is actually the older word, with until having been formed by the addition to it of the prefix un-, meaning "up to." In the 18th century the spelling 'till became fashionable, as if till were a shortened form of until. Although 'till is now nonstandard, 'til is sometimes used in this way and is considered acceptable, though it is etymologically incorrect."

Source:

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Rare video JFK 1960 Speech at the Houston Ministers - http://youtube.com/watch?v=x2Jr03ADQmk

I watched this recently after it was referenced by another article, and I was really impressed. I was also shocked at how you'd NEVER hear any candidate these days saying what Kennedy said. They all fall over themselves to pander to the religious establishment, and no one has the courage to stand up for the separation of church and state.

What Romney has done by speaking about his faith is open the door for anyone to ask probing questions about the actual tenets of the Mormon religion and I, for one, hope the the "unbiased press" and others will do just that. I would rather vote for someone who claimed to have seen a UFO than vote for a man who believes in "magic underwear," or that Joseph Smith found golden plates hidden in a buried box protected by an angel named Moroni! Dennis Kucinich seems far more rational AND believable than Willard Romney! The Bush-backing religious right ought to be asking the Mittster whether or not he believes the Book of Mormon is "another testament of Jesus Christ" and if he does, does he think that Jesus Christ appeared to the Indians in North America? Don't get me wrong: he has a right, as an American, to believe whatever he wants but I, as an American, have an equal right to know just how crazy his beliefs are before I choose to vote to make him the so-called "leader of the free world!" And just how "free" will we be if he actually believes that "freedom requires religion?"