COLUMN: God doesn’t want Romney for president
As Congress debated various immigration bills over the summer, President Bush addressed the country on primetime TV concerning the matter. Later that night, I visited with another friend who had also seen the speech. Our conversation went something like this:
“Did you listen to the president’s speech on immigration?” I asked.
“Oh yes. I just loved the part at the end when he said, ‘God Bless America,'” she replied.
“But what about the things he mentioned in his speech?” I asked.
Awkward silence.
Who cares what a candidate has to say? As long as he invokes deity, he’s got my vote.
In our zeal to vote our values, I’m afraid too many get blinded by the many politicians who wisely use religion as way to attract voters. If your policy isn’t sound, you can at least paint your opponents as godless.
Take, for example, the whole Ten Commandments debate that turned into quite the public relations victory for epublicans. Democrats were again called heathens for even suggesting a 5,300-pound statue endorsing a religion might not belong in an Alabama state courthouse. Thank heavens Republicans were there to stick up for our values.
Not long ago, TV comedian Stephen Colbert interviewed one such Republican, a congressman from Georgia who had co-sponsored a bill requiring both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate to display similar statues of the Ten Commandments.
Colbert asked the congressman to name each of the Ten Commandments. The congressman paused, then repeated just three of them: “Don’t murder. Don’t lie. Don’t steal.” He couldn’t remember any others.
Hmmm . . .
Maybe instead of complaining about how crazed liberals are removing God from government, we should ask ourselves if we can name all Ten Commandments or whatever the tenets of our faith may be. And more importantly, we should ask ourselves if we are living by those tenets.
Too many LDS members in Utah use the Ten Commandments fiasco as yet another reaffirmation of their Republican beliefs.
Of course, does anyone else find it ironic that Utah votes Republican more than any other state in large part because of its numerous LDS members, yet many Republicans/Christian Conservatives just plain don’t like Mormons?
As LDS members, we are so proud about how Republicans are bringing God into politics. Well, apparently, according to Christian Conservatives, that same God doesn’t want a Mormon as president. A Los Angeles Times poll suggested that 37 percent of Americans would never vote for a Mormon for president. Sorry, Mitt Romney. The only other religion that scored a higher negative rating was the Muslim faith. Never mind that whole Constitution thing that says, “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
In a seldom-quoted LDS scripture, one reads, “We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied” (Doctrine and Covenants 134:9).
Of course, many of us like to pick and choose when this scripture applies. When a case like the Ten Commandments debate favors our religion, many of us support it – never mind the millions of Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu Americans (among many other faiths) who don’t share our same Bible and consequent Ten Commandments. But when someone else infringes upon our own religious liberties (or Mitt Romney’s), we cry foul. Notice the double standard.
Thomas Jefferson wisely spoke of the need to build a wall between church and state. Sure, we all are entitled to the “free exercise of religion” as the First Amendment guarantees, but that doesn’t mean the government should actively support one religion over another, even when that religion happens to be our own. The First Amendment guarantees that too.
Don’t forget the LDS Article of Faith, “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege. Let them worship how, where or what they may.”
Not all Republicans share that same belief. Of course, if these types of conservatives have their way, not only will the Ten Commandments be hung in every public building across the country, but also no Mormon will ever sit in the Oval Office. After all, God wants it that way.
Payback stinks.
Jon Cox is a senior majoring in journalism. Comments can be sent to jcox@cc.usu.edu.