Isn’t it amazing how self-pitying and self-aggrandizing the religious freaks in this country are? It’s not enough that they can make straight-faced professions of “faith” at election times and impose their language on everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to the currency. It’s not enough that they can claim tax exemption and even subsidy for anything “faith-based.” It’s that when they are even slightly criticized for their absurd opinions, they can squeal as if being martyred and act as if they are truly being persecuted.
I do hear this from some Latter-day Saints, partly concerned that Romney’s presidential bid has thrust their (in some ways secretive) faith under the microscope, and partly worried that Romney won’t carry the day because of the resulting criticism. They call it ‘religious bigotry’, and it may indeed be that for a portion of the electorate. But it’s also a real worry when a major candidate thinks that God lives on planet Kolob, or that peoples’ skin colour can be changed because of their moral behaviour.
Refusing to vote for someone because they believe fairy tales is not bigotry. It’s an acknowledgement that the job of president may require some critical thinking. As Hitch says:
However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. My right to say and believe that is already guaranteed to me by the First Amendment.
Worth reading.
19 December 2007 at 7:18 am
Kolob’s a star, not a planet.
…a planet would be crazy!
19 December 2007 at 8:13 am
Blast. My religious knowledge! It’s slipping away!
I can feel it going.
19 December 2007 at 9:33 am
“God is in the details” ;P
19 December 2007 at 2:29 pm
Or was it the Devil?
The Devil wins, 764,000 Google hits to 81,900.
19 December 2007 at 3:18 pm
I can’t believe you googled that.
19 December 2007 at 4:05 pm
I’m a corpus linguist.
20 December 2007 at 10:55 am
“The Devil wins”<--Only if you vote for a Democrat!
20 December 2007 at 3:17 pm
Are we talking Australian Democrats? or American liberals?
In America, Democrats are liberals, but in Australia, Liberals aren’t Democrats.
I’m so confused.
20 December 2007 at 6:20 pm
I was referring to the American kind, in jest of course ;P
I voted Greens here.
Of course, the best option would be to let *me* run the entire country.