Salt Lake Tribune Endorses Hillary Clinton

OMG!  Get me some smelling salts!  I never thought I'd see the day where the Salt Lake Tribune would endorse a Democrat, much less than Hillary Clinton.  The fact that the Salt Lake Tribune in Mormon heavy Utah is endorsing Clinton speaks volumes about the toxicity of Donald Trump and the danger he poses for America - and the world at large.  Simply put, Trump is unfit for elected office - any political office.  Here are highlights from the Tribune's endorsement:

It has been amusing, to a degree, to watch the circus that was the Republican primary process struggle and fuss and finally produce such a disappointment to be its presidential nominee.

And there is no question that there are many Americans who feel lost and confused about a world that, in their eyes, has left them behind. Significant numbers of people have expressed a desire to blow up the system and start over. Or, more accurately, to pull America back to a day that was special only in that it placed white males alone at the top of the power pyramid.

But now the ballots have been printed and are arriving in Utah mailboxes. It is time to make a reasonable, considerate, realistic vote for president of the United States.

This election presents the two most unpopular candidates in recent history. One has developed a reputation for secrecy and dishonesty. The other built a campaign on insults and bigoted statements, finally losing any right to be taken seriously with the recent release of a video in which he was heard to brag about his ability to get away with sexually assaulting women.

There is certainly not a perfect choice but, at this point, the only candidate who comes close to being qualified and fit for the post is Hillary Clinton.

She has shown that she is tough, yet able and willing to reach out to politicians to her left and her right in order to get things done.

Her secret plan to reform health care in America during her husband's administration fell incompetently apart. But she learned from that experience and later worked across party lines to extend health insurance to millions of children.

Clinton's devotion to making the world a better place for the less fortunate, especially children, has been the core of her whole career. She sees the threats of terror abroad, gun violence at home and climate change globally and has plans to address all of that, and more.

She would make tax policy more equitable and work to help the poor climb out of their misery.

She has stood up for religious freedom around the world, even in dealing with regimes such as China, where it was a risky position to take.

The fact that she would be the first woman to hold that post is a bonus. It would be a signal to young women in this nation, and around the world, that the toughest glass ceiling there is has finally been shattered.

Yes, there are flaws and concerns, as there would be with anyone who has danced in the minefield of public life for 40 years. Clinton can be disturbingly secretive and has made a few big errors . . . . FBI says it has cleared her of any criminal wrongdoing and she has repeatedly admitted that she was wrong to leave all that sensitive information in such a vulnerable spot.

[A]s it played out, his [Trump's] entire campaign was based on divisive, bigoted and insulting rhetoric. On lies about how bad things are. On a promise to fix things by basically being a dictator. It was all designed to inflame a vocal minority of us who haven't adjusted to the fact that the America where white males brought home the bacon from secure factory jobs — and didn't have to deal with a globe of different ethnic backgrounds — is gone for good.

[A] President Clinton and the leaders of Congress, even if it remains in Republican hands, can get past eight years of gridlock and work together to make the hard choices that lie ahead.

Utah Republicans were perceptive enough to reject Trump in their March presidential caucus voting. Were they to support Clinton now, even by the narrowest of pluralities, it would send a strong message to the Republican Party to turn their backs on Trumpism and to work with Clinton where they can, rather than devote themselves to blocking her every move.

Wow! To quote an old song from my younger days, I felt the earth move under my feet.  Remarkable. It would seem that Mormons in Utah have far more moral decency and integrity than the professional Christian set and the hard core Christofascists. 

Romney v. Obama By Religious Affiliation

I know it's a continuing theme that I have been on on this blog, but the demise of the Romney/Ryan ticket and many of the GOP candidates for the U.S. Senate tracks directly back to the conscious decision to hang the party's hopes and future on the Christianist and white supremacist base of today's GOP.  As we all know, it backfired in a major way.   Maddow Blog has some interesting data that shows that Romney lost every religious group other than Mormons and evangelical Christians.  Do the math - it is impossible to win the general election if one has written off every other religious segment of the population.  Even the efforts of Catholic bishops to threaten their parishioners with eternal damnation failed to deliver a majority of the Catholic vote.   The GOP has become a sectarian party and it is paying the price for subverting religious freedom for all but the most hard right Christian extremists.  Here are some highlights of the analysis:

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life published a report this week based on exit polling data, and I put together a chart based on its findings.    There's a fair amount of interesting data here, though the results among Roman Catholic voters are arguably the most electorally significant. In every recent cycle, Catholics have been considered a key swing constituency, particularly throughout Midwest battleground states, and President Obama narrowly won their support, 50% to 48%. It suggests Republicans' efforts to focus on contraception and reproductive rights had limited success, and the Bishops' lobbying largely fell on deaf ears.

Also note, while many on the right hoped 2012 would be the year that Jewish voters abandoned Democrats, that didn't come close to happening. 

For the purposes of classification, "Other faiths" became a catch-all for a variety of minority religious traditions -- Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and others -- which on their own represent a very small percentage of the voting population. Their support for the GOP remains dismal.

And continue to keep an eye on the religiously unaffiliated -- one of the fastest growing segments of the faith population -- which includes atheists, agnostics, and theists who choose not to associate with any specific tradition. Their lopsided support for Obama reinforces yet another demographic problem for Republicans in the coming years.

[T]here was one curiosity in the results: Romney did slightly worse among Mormon voters this year than George W. Bush did in 2004.

A number of surveys have shown that the so called Christian Right is held in a dim view by a significant majority of voters.  Yet this is precisely the demographic the GOP thought would take it to victory.  It is time that the few sane people in the GOP stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

Romney Versus the Automakers and the Truth

Throughout this presidential campaign Mitt Romney's dishonesty has been shocking. Many say they have never seen a candidate so willing to lie and make up stories out of thin air.  Sadly, too often the media has aided Romney by lacking to call him what he is: a liar.  Perhaps some of Romney's most incredible lies have involved the auto industry - an industry that Romney was willing to utterly collapse and die.  As noted yesterday, both Chrysler and General Motors have felt compelled to speak out because Romney is running ads and making statements that simply are not true.  And Romney knows they are untrue.  The man simply cares nothing about the truth.  His sole values seem to be amazing more money and power for himself.  Literally not else matters, especially honesty and telling the truth.  I am honestly coming to believe the man is a sociopath.  A column in the New York Times looks at Romney's lies about the auto industry.  Here are excerpts:

When General Motors tells a presidential campaign that it is engaging in “cynical campaign politics at its worst,” that’s a pretty good signal that the campaign has crossed a red line and ought to pull back. Not Mitt Romney’s campaign. Having broadcast an outrageously deceitful ad attacking the auto bailout, the campaign ignored the howls from carmakers and came back with more. 

Mr. Romney apparently plans to end his race as he began it: playing lowest-common-denominator politics, saying anything necessary to achieve power and blithely deceiving voters desperate for clarity and truth. 

This started months ago when he realized that his very public 2008 stance against the successful and wildly popular government bailout of G.M. and Chrysler was hurting him in the valuable states of Ohio and Michigan. In February, he wrote an essay for The Detroit News calling the bailout “crony capitalism on a grand scale” because unions benefited and insisting that Detroit would have been better off to refuse federal money.

When that tactic didn’t work, he began insisting at the debates that his plan for Detroit wasn’t really that different from President Obama’s. (Except for the niggling detail of the $80 billion federal investment.) 

That was quickly discredited, so Mr. Romney began telling rallies last week that Chrysler was considering moving its production to China. Chrysler loudly denounced it as “fantasies,” saying it was only considering increasing production in China for sale in China, without moving a single American job. 

The Romney campaign ignored the company, following up with an instantly notorious ad saying President Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.”  

Nearly 1.5 million people are working as a direct result of the bailout. Ohio’s unemployment rate is well below the national average. G.M.’s American sales continue to increase, and Chrysler said this week that its third-quarter net income rose 80 percent. These companies haven’t just bounced back from the bottom; they are accelerating. 

What Mr. Romney cannot admit is that all this is a direct result of the government investment he would have rejected. It’s bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it..  .  .  .  .  Mr. Romney is providing a grim preview of what kind of president he would be.

What I find deeply disturbing is that Romney claims to be a deeply religious man.  Yet he lies with impunity.  As with the Christofascists and the Catholic Church hierarchy, the truth simply doesn't matter.   No wonder the younger generations are fleeing organized religion in record numbers.  Increasingly, being a Christian or in Romney's case, Mormon, is synonymous with being a liar.

American Athiests Cause Stir In Charlotte with Billboards

The American Atheists have definitely stirred the pot by erecting two billboards in prominent locations in Charlotte, North Carolina, the site of the upcoming Democrat National Convention.  One billboard - pictured above - goes after Mormons, the other goes after Christianity, or at least the conservative version of it.  What's missing in the uproar is any reminder that both Mormons and Christians feel they have a license to make horrible statements about others, but they can't take the heat when it's dished back at them.  Here are highlights from the Charlotte Observer:

Two controversial billboards dot the Charlotte skyline just in time for the Democratic National Convention. The two signs appear to attack the Christian and Mormon religions.

One sign, which sits off the Brookshire Freeway, reads "Mormonism: Magic Underwear, Baptizes Dead People, Big Money Big Bigotry."  The other, off Wilkinson Boulevard, reads "Christianity: Sadistic God: useless Savior, 30,000+ versions of "Truth" promotes hate, calls it "Love.""

A statement from the group's president, David Silverman, said that because of the DNC coming to Charlotte he wanted to let Americans know about his group's displeasure about both candidates making religion a part of their campaigns.

“The election of our leaders in the United States is one of the most important decisions that we as citizens make. Allowing our judgment to be clouded by sheer silliness is unacceptable. No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification for those desiring public office. How can we disregard our governing principles so blatantly,” Silverman asked.

Mormons’ First Families Rally Behind Romney

It's only to be expected that some of Mitt Romney's fellow Mormons would rally to his support in the current presidential contest.  The irony, of course, is that the family histories of many of these "first families" makes a mockery of Romney signing onto the National Organization for Marriage's anti-gay manifesto.  And these family histories also most definitely demonstrate the lie of Romney's repeated statements against same sex marriage (one of many lies from Romney) wherein he claims that throughout recorded history, marriage has always been between "one man and one woman."  Romney apparently has amnesia as to his own genealogy and that of his fellow Mormons.  Or perhaps they retroactively withdrew from polygamy.  The New York Times looks at these "first families" and their role in Romney's political aspirations.  Here are some excerpts: 

In the mid-1800s, newly converted families from across the United States and Europe gathered in the growing Mormon town of Nauvoo, Ill., to help their prophet, Joseph Smith, build a New Jerusalem. 

Now, more than 150 years later, descendants of those first families of Mormonism are joining together in a new effort: delivering the White House to Mitt Romney.

These families — Marriotts, Rollinses, Gardners and others — have formed a financial bulwark and support network for Mr. Romney at every important point in his political career. Starting with his 1994 Senate race, moving into the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics effort that became his political springboard and continuing through his first foray into presidential politics, they have been there to open doors, provide seed money and rally support. 

Mr. Romney’s candidacy has produced great pride among many Mormons, known officially as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But for this core group of the religion’s most prominent families, the ties to Mr. Romney go deeper. They share with him not only a faith, but also a dramatic history in which they have scaled the ladder of American society,  .  .  .  .

In interviews, several of Mr. Romney’s supporters expressed their concerns that attention to the financial support he has received from other early families of the religion would raise old prejudices and accusations of clannishness that followed their forebears. 

On the manifests of the wagon carts that made the difficult trek with Young and then helped settle Utah were names that now dot the campaign filings for Mr. Romney and the political groups that support him. 

Mr. Eyre said the main attraction to Mr. Romney for most Mormons is their “common values” with him, not their “common faith.” But he nonetheless described a “giddiness” over his prospects. 

“It’s like an arc where the steps to mainstream understanding and inclusion were so small for so long — unfairly small, because other groups’ arcs seemed to move faster,” he said. “And now suddenly there is this big chance that the arc will complete itself very swiftly and very powerfully.” 

I am by no means anti-Mormon.  I do believe, however, in telling the full story.  And sadly, the Times piece doesn't note that almost all of these families involved polygamous marriages.  I guess it would have underscored Romney's hypocrisy on same sex marriage too heavily even for the Times' taste. 

Mitt Romney's Continuing Lies

Mitt Romney's willingness to lie and pander to religious extremists knows no limits.  The image above does a great job at underscoring this reality.  In signing NOM's marriage pledge, Romney conveniently ignored not only his own family background, but also all the polygamists in the Old Testament, not to mention the regions of the world where polygamy still occurs.  I think the man would claim that black was really white if it would get him the vote of some moron.  We do not need him in the White House - or any elected office for that matter.

Is Mitt Romney’s Mormonism Fair Game?

My answer to the Caption of this post is a resounding YES!  Romney has prostituted himself to the ugliest elements of the Christianist right and signed NOM's declaration of war of the rights to religious freedom of LGBT Americans and Americans who support marriage equality and to denominations like the the Conservative branch of American Judaism who have come out in support of religious same sex marriage.  And lets not forget Romney's under the table $10,000 contribution in support of Proposition 8.  Once you open the door to bringing religion into the civil laws as Romney has and is continuing seeking to do, then it is ALL on the table and open game for discussion and, if appropriate, condemnation.  And that doesn't mean that critics are necessarily anti-Mormon.  I only means that references to personal religious belief open the flood gate if those personal religious beliefs are detrimental to the civil rights of other citizens.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Romney's disingenuous attempt to pander to religion, but demand that the scope of the discussion be limited to his terms.  (Editor's note: In the interest of full disclosure, I grew up through high school in upstate New York not too far from where Joesph Smith purported to find the "golden tablets" and it is noteworthy that most locals still think that Smith was an utter nutcase).   Here are highlights:

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has developed a simple method to determine whether coverage of the candidate’s Mormonism has crossed a line.  “Our test to see if a similar story would be written about others’ religion is to substitute ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish,’ ” Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul wrote in objection to a Washington Post article last fall about the candidate’s role as a church leader in Boston.

She pointed out a passage that explained a central tenet of Mormonism. It described the belief that Christ’s true church was restored after centuries of apostasy when the 19th-century prophet Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from golden plates that he discovered in Upstate New York.
“Would you write this sentence in describing the Jewish faith?” Saul asked in a November e-mail, adding: “ ‘Jews believe their prophet Moses was delivered tablets on a mountain top directly from G-d after he appeared to him in a burning bush.’ Of course not, yet you reference a similar story in Mormonism.”
 
Jodi Kantor reported in the New York Times that Romney’s aides often ask reporters, “Would you have written this about a Jewish candidate?” The guilt trip may be motivated by political calculation, sincere concern about religious bigotry for a faith that has suffered its fair share or some combination of the two. Regardless of its impetus, the campaign’s response gets at a crucial challenge for the news media: to educate the public about an unfamiliar faith unusually central to a candidate’s formation without treating Mormonism as biographical exotica that could fuel prejudices.

Now that Romney has secured the necessary delegates to become the Republican nominee, that challenge is front and center. Obama strategist David Axelrod has suggested that Mormonism is off limits as political ammunition. Yet news outlets delve into Mormon apocrypha, and comedian and Democratic super PAC donor Bill Maher launches salvo after salvo against Romney’s faith.

Romney clearly prefers to talk about his religion on his own terms.  At an event in Wisconsin in April, a man began asking the candidate about some of the more controversial aspects of Mormonism, including its past ban on blacks in the priesthood.  “I’m sorry, we’re just not going to have a discussion about religion in my view, but if you have a question, I’ll be happy to answer your question,” Romney said.

Romney has declined to clarify whether he believed that the ban — which was still in effect as he entered the local church hierarchy in Boston — was divine doctrine or flawed teaching. He has refused to comment on the policy beyond expressing relief that it was lifted. 

But Romney has also demonstrated an aversion to talking about subjects most Mormons proudly discuss, including the religion’s founding story.  “Without the Joseph Smith story, you don’t have a Mormonism,” said Patrick Mason, a professor of Mormon studies and an expert on anti-Mormonism at Claremont Graduate University. “And there is no way, especially given Romney’s church positions, all that I can collect, that he is personally embarrassed by that story. I think what is going on is a political move.”
 
Mormonism does not enjoy the authenticating quality of antiquity. Because it came of age in a modern time, its theology and saintly visitations can strike people as stranger than those of older religions shrouded by centuries.   As for Romney, church officials said it is up to the candidate how much he divulges about his beliefs and his role within the church. “But it is a matter of public record that he served as a Mormon bishop and a stake president . . . .

Asked whether it was inappropriate to discuss Joseph Smith and the core beliefs of Mormonism in connection with Romney’s time as a leader in the church, Otterson [LDS head of worldwide public affairs]said: “We’re very excited about Joseph Smith; it is absolutely core to us. But how to do that in the context of this kind of reporting? . . . It would just seem to me that you would want to run a sidebar.”

[M]any Mormons are wary about the assault the religion might come under from the secular left. Maher, the HBO comedian — who has given $1 million to a pro-Obama super PAC — has reinforced that fear by repeatedly calling Mormonism a “cult.”  It is understandable that the Romney campaign would be sensitive to such criticism. But its guard is likewise up against biographical descriptions of the candidate’s life in the church.

Frankly, in my opinion we need to get religion 100% out of politics and certainly out of impacting the civil rights of citizens.  At the same time, all Americans need to remember how Smith is remembered in upstate New York. Wikipedia has this excerpt on how Smith was viewed in upstate New York:

Smith continued traveling to western New York and Pennsylvania as a treasure seeker and a farmhand. In 1826, he was brought before a court in Chenango County, New York, for "glass-looking," or pretending to find lost treasure.    .   .   .   .  Smith had left his treasure hunting company, his former associates believed he had double-crossed them by taking for himself what they considered joint property. They ransacked places where a competing treasure-seer said the plates were hidden, the occurrence of which caused Smith to claim he could not accomplish the translation in Palmyra.

If Romeny wants to talk religion and pander to Chritianist extremists, then EVERYTHING is on the table about his Mormon religion is on the table for open discussion - including its founder who was viewed as a fraud and fortune hunter in upstate New York..

What's Behind Romney's Extremist Foreign Policy?

One would think that after the disastrous fool's errand in Iraq launched needlessly by Chimperator George Bush and the never ending fiasco in Afghanistan which any two-bit historian could have predicted, the GOP and Mitt Romney would be preaching a moderate foreign policy that seeks to avoid future disasters. But quite to the contrary, Mitt Romney seems hell bent to venture into a shooting war with Iran and a trade war with China.  One has to wonder why the extremism.  One obvious answer is the xenophobia of the delusional Kool-Aid drinking base that Romney is constantly pandering to.  Another answer, based on a post by Andrew Sullivan, might be on the bizarre manner in which Romney's Mormon faith depicts the United States as the sole blessed by God nation on earth.  The latter explanation is far more frightening than the first.  Here are highlights from Andrew's post:

In some ways, Mormonism is the perfect form of Christianity for Christianist nationalist politics. It is the only form of Christianity that believes Jesus visited America; that the Garden of Eden was somewhere in Missouri; and the only one that, as a theological proposition, sees the US Constitution as an integral part of the divine order, and one that Jesus personally foresaw in his appearances in America two millennia ago, and blessed.

It means that America alone has divine permission to do what it wants in the wider world, that America is subject to different standards than everyone else (because we alone are divinely blessed), and that geopolitics is about the global supremacy of the modern world's first divine nation (even if Iran and Israel might differ on which country is divinely blessed).

There's a reason, in other words, that Romney's foreign policy does not have a moderate, realist strain to it; that it is wedded to zero-sum conflict as the only way to engage the world (he regards Russia as America's number one geopolitical foe and wants a trade war with China); that its opposition to Jihadism gets perilously close to opposition to Islam as a whole; and that its core principle is that America is always, by definition, right.

I wish we had a Mormon candidate in a party that adheres to a separation of church and state and of politics and religion (like Reid or Huntsman in a different universe). Then we could regard that faith as utterly irrelevant to a candidate's capacity for running the country. But when the GOP affirmatively declares that there is no such thing as a secular decision, that there is no place and no decision and no policy which is not subject to religious and theological influence ... it seems to me that we have to examine how a candidate's faith affects their politics - by the GOP's own reasoning.

Does Romney believe that America is uniquely divine among nations? How would that affect his decisions as president? Does he believe that the Constitution is also divine and a "necessary prologue" for the triumph of the LDS Church in America and across the world? Would he therefore appoint Justices who share that view? Or if the original Constitution is divine, and the Amendments are not, as Garry Wills asks, what status do the Amendments have in a Mormon president's eyes?

Do I find these possibilities about Romney very, very frightening?  Most certainly.  Particularly given the heightened powers of the presidency pushed through by the Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  I am not anti-religion per se.  However, religion has caused more wars and more needless deaths than almost any other cause throughout history.  If Romney believes even a fraction of this bullshit, the last thing we need is for him to be in the White House.

Romney Prostitutes Himself to Extremists at Liberty University

Demonstrating that he will stoop to any lengths to endear himself to Christofascist extremists, Mitt Romney spoke at the commencement at Liberty University - the late Jerry Falwell's lasting stain on Virginia  today.  Appearing at Liberty was part of Romney's pandering campaign to endear himself to the Christianist base of the Republican Party.   As the Richmond Times Dispatch reports, during his speech, Romney endeavored to stress his shared values of family and service.  The service part, of course, is aimed solely at those who are willing to submit to Mormon beliefs.  And as for family values, Romney glossed over his family history that makes a mockery of the Christianist claims that throughout history marriage has been "one man and one woman."  Truth be told - and telling the truth is not something Romney likes to engage in - Romney's ancestors were champions of alternate "lifestyles to use the terminology the Christofascists like to direct against gays.  This tidbit from Wikipedia tells it all:

Miles Park Romney (1843-1904) was born in Nauvoo, Illinois, the son of Miles Romney.^[1][2] He was the president of the St. George Social Hall Company and the St. George Dramatic Association, and also served as a chief of police, attorney-at-law, newspaper editor, and architect.^[3] Romney's son was Gaskell Romney, his grandson was George W. Romney and his great-grandson is Mitt Romney.

 [Miles Park] Romney, on April 7, 1885, joined a party leaving Arizona to find land outside the U.S., in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, on which his family could settle, free from fear of his arrest.^[8] Romney died on February 26, 1904, in Colonia Dublan, Mexico.

[Miles Park]Romney's five wives, in order of marriage, were Hannah Hood Hill, Caroline "Carrie" Lambourne, Catharine Jane Cottam, Alice Marie "Annie" Woodbury and Emily "Millie" Henrietta Eyring Snow.  

If that this equates to "one man one woman," Mitt Romney is very seriously math challenged.  But it gets worse.  Even Fox News - typically a/k/a "Faux New"s on this blog - has more details on Mitt "Etch A Sketch" Romney's family background that show the lie of his comments at Liberty University today.  Her e are some highlights:

 

Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.

Romney's great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of polygamists. She wrote vividly in her autobiography about how she "used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow" over her own husband's multiple marriages.

Romney's great-great grandfather, Parley Pratt, an apostle in the church, had 12 wives. In an 1852 sermon, Parley Pratt's brother and fellow apostle, Orson Pratt, became the first church official to publicly proclaim and defend polygamy as a direct revelation from God.

Romney's father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, where Mormons fled in the 1800s to escape religious persecution and U.S. laws forbidding polygamy. He and his family did not return to the United States until 1912, more than two decades after the church issued "The Manifesto" banning polygamy.

"When you read the family's history, you realize how important polygamy was to them," said Todd Compton, a Mormon and independent historian who wrote a book about the polygamous life of the church's founder, Joseph Smith. "They left America and started again as pioneers, after they had done it over and over again previously."  . Carmon Hardy, a polygamy expert and retired history professor at California State University-Fullerton, said polygamy was "a very important part of Miles Park Romney's family."

While it's true that one doesn't get to pick their family, one DOES get to choose whether they will knowingly tell lies for political expedience.  The truth is that Mitt Romney's family tree makes monogamous same sex marriage look pretty run of the mill compared the the generations of polygamous m2012arriage that were the norm in Romney's family tree for nearly well over a century.  Whenever Romney opens his moth to bloviate about "one man one woman" marriage "throughout recorded history," his nose needs to grow like Pinocchio.  His own family proves the lie of that claim. Oh, and then there's the problem of the Old Testamant, including bit not limited to King Salomon's 700 wives and 300 concubines.   If Leviticus continues to apply to gays, then what about the Old Testament approved form of marriage - polygamy?.    

Young Voters are Wary of Mormons and Evangelicals

With the Republican Party rapidly transforming into a quasi-religious party, one has to wonder what the party leadership is thinking in terms of long term survival. Yes, elderly voters are the most conservative and consistent voters but truth be told they are dying off - literally. Yet, by embracing religious extremism, the GOP is driving away younger voters who, as the age and vote more consistently will likely avoid the GOP. A new survey by Public Religion Research Institute ("PRRI") contains responses from younger voters that ought to be a wake up call to the GOP if it wants to remain mainstream over the longer term. An article in Religion Dispatches that looks at the survey results explains why. Here are some highlights:

And here is some startling new data: younger voters—the so-called “millenials” aged 18-29—view Mormonism far less favorably than their elders. Fifty-six percent of voters aged 18-29 said they were at least somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of a Mormon president . . .

I spoke to PRRI Director of Research Dan Cox, an expert in youth politics and religion, to get a sense of what might be motivating discomfort with Mormon candidates among millennial voters. According to Cox, millennials are significantly more diverse than older voter cohorts: four in ten millennials are African-American, Latino, or Asian-American. Thanks in part to social media, they also interact with an incredibly diverse range of peers. “They have friends who are immigrants or are from immigrant families. They have friends who are LGBT. This impacts the way they view issues like immigration and LGBT rights,” according to Cox. “They believe that LGBT people are ‘just like me.’”

Millenials are also less likely than older voters to report a religious affiliation: fully one-third report no affiliation at all. “They see the social conservatism of some churches, and they say, ‘if this is what religion looks like, I want no part of it,’” says Cox.

Cox believes that millennial voter aversion to Mormon candidates (evangelicals too scored low marks among 18-29 year olds) may be in reaction to the perceived social conservatism of Mormonism, and particularly its political campaigns against same-sex marriage.

If Cox is right—and it would be great to see subsequent polls gathering qualitative data to confirm these hypotheses—It’s not that millennials hold a prejudicial view of Mormonism as a cult, or discredit our theology. It’s that they object to the Church’s stance on LGBT civil equality.

It's striking that the anti-LGBT mindset of the GOP is one of the strongest factors alienating millenials. Is anyone in the GOP paying attention? I doubt it. They're too busy prostituting themselves to hate groups and extremists.

Joe Scarbrough Slams Pastor Jeffress

In a recent column on Politico, Joe Scarborough proves that there are a few decent conservatives around, albet the numbers seem to have dwindled badly. Why so? Because he goes after Pastor Robert Jeffress (pictured at right) and similar hate merchants who wrap themselves in the Bible even as they engage in evil deeds and make a mockery of Christ's message of not judging others. Scarborough even uses a term that I use on occasion to describe bastards like Jeffress: modern day Pharisees. After the Roman Catholic Church few large denominations display more hypocrisy and homophobia than the Southern Baptist Convention and Jeffress is a big deal in the SBC. It's individuals like Jeffress who constantly judge others who are helping to drive younger members from the SBC. A trend that one can only hope continues until a critical mass is reached and the SBC either moves into the 21st century or collapses and withers away. Yes, the latter is a delicious thought to contemplate. Here are some highlights from Scarborough's piece:

Judge not that ye be not judged”; so said Jesus. But don’t try telling that to Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress. Jeffress, a prominent Texas preacher and Rick Perry supporter, created a firestorm at last weekend’s Values Voters Summit by omnipotently declaring that cult member Mitt Romney was headed straight for hell.

Isn’t that special? I have always been fascinated by mere mortals who arrogantly ignore Jesus’s teachings to make declarations about the salvation of other men’s souls. By assuming the Almighty’s role, Jeffress has embraced the proud tradition of Christian stalwarts like Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard and the PTL Club’s Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

Modern American politics as practiced by Jeffress and his ilk require that Jesus Christ be thrown under the bus with great regularity by the very same people who claim His name. For these modern day Pharisees, a president who declares Jesus Christ as his personal lord and savior is to be doubted if he is from the wrong political party.

[I]n all the years I spent going to Southern Baptist churches, attending Sunday school, Sunday morning services, Training Union, Sunday night services, Tuesday Bible studies, Wednesday night church supper, Vacation Bible School, Bible drills from the age of 5, and just about every other fellowship meeting that the Baptist church offers, I can recall nothing in Jesus’s teachings or the New Testament that should fill you with the kind of self-righteous arrogance to declare to Americans which candidate is spiritually fit for the Oval Office. That’s not just bad politics. It is bad theology.

[O]ne of the great truths that even I absorbed was Jesus Christ’s repeated warnings to his followers to shun the self-righteousness of religious leaders and instead to lead with love. . . . . Jesus declared that heaven would be filled by those believers who clothed the poor, fed the hungry, gave water to the thirsty and brought hope to the hopeless.

And I wonder how much longer candidates like Perry will allow modern-day Pharisees like Jeffress to do harm to the Republican Party.

For years now, GOP leaders have sat silent as extremists called political rivals everything from “Nazi” to “Racist” to “Marxist.” Now we can add “Cultist” to the GOP lexicon. how some courage, Gov. Perry. Stand up to a powerful supporter, because sometimes being tough requires more of a man than shooting a coyote in the face.

Ouch! Scarborough is 100% on point, of course. What is the most sad about today's GOP is that even arch conservatives like Scarborough - who held a seat in Congress for the GOP some years back - now are labeled as soft or "RINOS" by the Kool-Aid drinkers and their spineless political whores in the GOP.

New Gallup Poll: Christians More Willing to Use Attacks on Civilians Than Muslims

The Christianist work over time to depict Islam as a religion of hate and violence yet a new Gallup survey reveals that Muslims are less likely to support violence against and the murder of civilians than - you guessed it - Christians. Atheists and Agnostics also rate higher than Christians in their disapproval of the targeting and killing of civilians. Thus, it seems that when the professional Christians and Christianist demagogues are railing against Muslims, they must be attributing to Muslims their own moral bankruptcy. The charts below look at two difference scenarios concerning attacks on and the murder of civilians. When it comes to military attacks against civilians, Muslims are twice as likely as Protestant Christians to say such attacks are never justified. Here are highlights from the Gallup findings:

Muslim Americans are the staunchest opponents of military attacks on civilians, compared with members of other major religious groups Gallup has studied in the United States. Seventy-eight percent of Muslim Americans say military attacks on civilians are never justified.

A similar revulsion of attacks on civilians by small terror groups likewise showed Muslims to be the most likely to say such are never justified, although on this question, Christians narrowed the morality gap even though they still scored more poorly than atheists and agnostics:

There is wider agreement that attacks on civilians by individuals or small groups are never justified. At least 7 in 10 American adults from all major religious groups agree that these attacks are never justified, but Muslim Americans again are most opposed, with 89% rejecting such attacks.

One explanation for the findings in my view is the sad fact that I believe that many Christians continue to see non-Christians as less than fully human. Thus, violence against them by the military is acceptable. It's sick and disgusting, but I suspect it is the unspoken factor.

Walmart Carrying Anti-Gay Book for Children

I've never been a fan of Walmart - I dislike the company's employment practices and its willingness to kiss up to homophobes. Now, there is another reason for the LGBT community to shun the mammoth retailer - it is sell an anti-gay books aimed at children. Yep, that's right. The propaganda piece is entitled "Chased by an Elephant, the Gospel Truth about Today’s Stampeding Sexuality." A wave of gay teen suicides and what does Walmart do? It peddles anti-gay propaganda authored by a Mormon with ties to and anti-gay Mormon organization called the Standard of Liberty. Gays are not the only targets of Standard of Liberty which advocates for a Christofascist theocracy. Until the folks at Walmart get their heads out of their ass, we as a community need to take our pink dollars somewhere else post haste. Here are some highlights from Q salt lake:
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A children’s book written by the wife of anti-gay Standard of Liberty president Stephen Graham is being carried by over 100 Walmart stores. Chased by an Elephant, the Gospel Truth about Today’s Stampeding Sexuality by Janice Barrett Graham was written to “help shed the clear light of truth on today’s dark and tangled ideas about male and female, proper gender roles, the law of chastity, and the God-given sexual appetite,” according to Janice Graham in the book’s introduction.
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The Grahams claim that their son, Andrew, successfully changed his sexual orientation and is now a happily married man. Andrew Graham wrote the book, Captain of My Soul, saying that he was “lured into same gender internet pornography during his high school years, and recruited into cursory homosexual experimentation with older men while at Brigham Young University.”
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Andrew says he is shedding light on the “deceitful and predatory nature of the ‘gay’ lifestyle.” The book’s introduction says Andrew’s “story ends happily with his subsequent deliverance and healing through family support, expert professional counseling, truth, and repentance through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
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Frankly, I will be counting the days until we hear that Andrew Graham has been caught in an undercover gay sex put on by his local police department or that he's left his wife for a man. Sadly, as usual, the ex-gay proponents seem to care nothing of the straight spouses who are lured into marriages doomed to fail. Rather, it's all about making a buck and promoting religious intolerance.

Is Chemical Castration an Option for LDS Gays?

Some Mormons seem way too preoccupied with gays and just cannot grasp the fact that God - yes, God - made some of us gay for some reason other than simply make our lives Hell at the hands of his sanctimonious and unloving alleged followers. Pam Spaulding has found yet another example of this lunacy where it is proposed to use chemicals/drugs to turn gays essentially into eunuchs. Here's some of what these sex obsessed busy bodies are saying:

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[I]s chemical castration an option for LDS gays? I mean, if you're faithful LDS & accept that for whatever reason the Lord has put you on Earth as a "eunuch" (best case, if you can stay strong), why should you have to struggle with incessant thoughts that are not just inappropriate now, but will be inappropriate in the next life, too, only serve to pervert any desires to have children in a celestial relationship in the next life. There is zero point to having homosexual thoughts, it's not as though they're a normal part of the procreation process - they're just an annoying, perverted form of biology, entirely worthless.

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Not all Mormons are amused with this concept, however. Many at PostMormon couldn't believe how deranged this is and said so:

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I wonder if there is a chemical treatment for stupidity that would render such idiots as that Mr. Haggerty mute and at least temporarily paralyzed so that he could not do any more damage to the young hearts and souls of those sent to him. Trust that there's a special place in Hell (if there's a hell) for such men. -------------I wonder how many gay football players wonder if they'd not been surrounded by so many studly young buffed up men if they'd been less tempted. The assumptions that playing the piano or football or any other activity adds to ones gender preference is ludicrous.------I always liked camping and hiking instead of the innane useless stitchery the girls were required to do and there's no doubt that I have a strong preference for men, especially my own man.----- The people who promote such idiotic ideas as that Mr. Haggerty should be placed on a special ice floe and set adrift in the North Atlantic.

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Personally, I could care less what Mormons do in their own bedrooms - I just wished they'd give us LGBT Americans the same courtesy.

Marie Osmond Comes Out for Gay Marriage

Kudos to Marie for putting her denomination's anti-gay rhetoric behind her and coming out in support of her daughter and marriage equality. As a parent, I have never understood how a good, loving parent could disown their own child simply because they are gay or lesbian or transgendered. Personally, I'd die for any one of my children. Yet far too many Christianists, Mormons, and other Kool-Aid drinkers do just that. I always have to wonder if these people were ever even decent parents in the first place if they can throw their own child out on the streets. No doubt Marie will have some religious extremists condemning her, but I believe that she has done exactly what Christ would have wanted and what he would have done himself. Here are some highlights via Pam's House Blend:

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Actress and singer Marie Osmond was on a radio station KOST 103.5 Los Angeles yesterday, discussing her lesbian daughter Jessica and Marie's beliefs.Contrary to rumors, Marie spoke of how much she loves and supports her daughter, despite her own Mormon religious convictions. Naturally, the gay marriage question came up, and, we're proud to say, Marie spoke in support of civil rights for everyone, regardless of orientation.

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An audio clip of Marie's comments can be found here. Hopefully, Marie's courage will embolden others to likewise do the right thing. Contact Marie Osmond at Kesti@marieosmond.com to thank her for speaking out about her daughter, and for supporting marriage equality.

Mormons Had Hand in Torture Policies

I mentioned yesterday how a survey found that the majority of white evangelical Christians supported the Bush/Cheney torture policies that increasingly seem to have been war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, thus raising a serious question of just how far Christian dogma has been perverted by those who are generally the most self-congratulatory over their own perceived piety. It turns out that many Mormons are on the same page with those who support torture. In fact, a new Salt Lake Tribune story looks at the significant role that Mormons played in establishing and applying the torture program. WWJD? It s a lengthy article but one that definitely deserves a full reading. Here are some story highlights:

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An overheard conversation among several women at a local deli: "I can't believe this country elected Obama as president; it must be a sign of the end times when the Constitution will hang by a thread." The irony of this uniquely Utah political thread about church elders saving the Constitution might have shocked the lunch bunch had they read The Dark Side by Jane Mayer (Doubleday, 2008). Reading Mayer's disturbing book is likely to lead to the conclusion that the Constitution is more imperiled than ever; but it also reveals the troubling fingerprints of several of my fellow Mormons whose handiwork, not the Obama election, did so much to create the present crisis.

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Although the decisions which put us in the grim business of torture, body-snatching, extraordinary renditions, making people disappear, indefinite confinement without charges and warrantless wiretapping were made by the president and vice president, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints served as helpful enablers. Not only did they provide the legal architecture, they provided the "scientific" patina for the plunge into the barbaric business of torture.

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Take Latter-day Saint Timothy E. Flanigan, deputy White House counsel, who, along with David Addington, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Jim Haynes comprised the secretive "War Council" of lawyers -- a self-appointed group Mayer describes as having virtually no experience in law enforcement, military service, counterterrorism or the Muslim world. Together, they were the brain trust that devised the legal cover that Vice President Dick Cheney needed to work his will. They secretly crafted the warrantless surveillance program which allowed the National Security Agency to intercept telephone calls and e-mails to and from American citizens within the United States.

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They secretly devised the Bush military commissions, which were essentially kangaroo courts and legally insufficient to satisfy the minimal adjudicatory standards required under the Geneva Conventions, which, as provided by the Constitution and Congress, constitute the supreme law of the land. They secretly conspired to ignore the law and frame interrogation techniques around the methods of the Spanish Inquisition, the Soviet KGB and Chairman Mao.

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BYU law school graduate Jay S. Bybee was the assistant attorney general directing the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel. At the instigation of Addington and Yoo, Bybee issued official legal opinions that redefined the crime of torture to make it all but impossible to commit. Barbarity was not torture unless it created pain equal to death or organ failure. A newly-declassified Bybee memorandum lists 10 previously top-secret interrogation techniques approved for use by the CIA, including waterboarding.

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Incredibly, Bybee seems to have been unaware that the United States had prosecuted waterboarding as a war crime after World War II. In 2003, before his role in authorizing U.S. torture was known, Bybee was given a lifetime judicial appointment on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Had his role in torture been known, it is unlikely he would have been confirmed.

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Two devout Mormons also engineered the more grisly wet work. . . . two psychologists, James E. Mitchell and John B. Jessen, who had worked with the Air Force's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape programs. Neither had an intelligence or interrogation background or had experience with Muslim terrorists, but, according to the FBI, they had experience in designing, testing, implementing and monitoring torture techniques that were illegal in the United States and elsewhere in the civilized world. . . . they built the CIA's surreal secret interrogation program around the same brutal coercion that had successfully forced American POWs to lie to their North Korean and Chinese captors. In other words, they assumed that the very brutality which had forced American soldiers to lie would magically force a Muslim terrorist to tell the truth, even if he had to be waterboarded 183 times.

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My reaction? God protect us all from the self-anointed godly Christians and Mormons.

Proposition 8 Really a Loss for Mormons?

Author Frank Schaeffer at the Huffington Post has a piece that raises the argument that by undertaking a high profile role in the Proposition 8 battle, the Mormon Church has in reality suffered what will be a long term loss. Why, because with all the increased scrutiny the Mormon faith is receiving the plentiful "weirdness" of the Mormon religion will come out - as is already happening - and overall negative views of the denomination will increase. As I have said before, I am originally from a part of New York State close to where Joseph Smith allegedly had his revelation and to this day, Smith is regarded by most locals as a serious whack job - hence why he left the area. Familiarity often breeds contempt and hopefully the Mormon Church reaps some scrutiny that will convince the broader public that Mormons are NOT mainstream whatsoever. Such a result would in my view be Divine justice indeed. Here are some column highlights:

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The recent confrontation between the Mormon Church and the gay community bodes ill for Mormonism. It seems that the Mormons have begun to believe their own propaganda when it comes to seeing themselves adds "just another" evangelical group. They aren't. The evangelicals may be plenty crazy, as they have manifested themselves to be through the late great Religious Right (that is now crashing in flames following the Obama victory), but the Mormons are exponentially crazier when it comes to marriage, and gender roles.

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[T]o paraphrase the famous line from Animal Farm; some religions are weirder than others, especially when it comes to beliefs about marriage, sex and gender. One of the strangest is the Mormons.

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Here is just two of many quaint bits of Mormon "teaching" ( this first on race is no longer the official position of the church, but still...): "And if any man mingles his seed with the seed of Cane [i.e black people] the only way he could get rid of it or have salvation would be to come forward & have his head cut off & spill his blood upon the ground. It would also take the life of his Children."(Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 1852, Brigham Young's address before the legislative assembly of the Territory of Utah upon slavery)

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"Nearly all the great discoveries of man in the last half century have, in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a Prophet... I know that he said the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to be a greater age than we do, that they lived generally to near the age of 1000 years. He described the men as averaging near six feet in height, and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style. In my Patriarchal blessing, given by the father of Joseph the Prophet, in Kirtland, 1837, I was told that I should preach the gospel to the inhabitants of the sea -- to the inhabitants of the moon, even the planet you can now behold with your eyes."(Oliver B. Huntington, Young Woman's Journal, Vol. 3, p. 263-264)

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So, okay, enough already of the "seed of Cain," moon men, on to marriage, California's Proposition 8 and the Mormons... Why pick on gay people? Here's my theory: The Mormons have assiduously pursued a policy of trying to be accepted as just one more of the thousands of Protestant splinter groups that, taken together, are often generically called "Christians" as a catchall for the born-again amongst us. That is why the Mormons jumped into this debate: make friends with the evangelical Religious Right and the more right wing Roman Catholics by joining the neighborhood Church Lady gang to beat up the gay guy.

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What is the sexual/marriage/gender teaching of the Mormons who are raising money to stop two men or women from marrying. Here's a taste: A Mormon belief is that men resurrect their wives. The Mormon man becomes a god on some uninhabited planet. As the god of his own world he will resurrect those wives who were obedient to him. They then become the goddesses of his planet.

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With their support for Proposition 8 the Mormons have more or less done what someone might do who -- in an incredibly dumb moment -- decides to call up the local IRS office and start asking the kind of questions that inevitably leads to getting audited. There is an old phrase that the Mormon leaders who launched their anti-gay crusade might have paid attention to: "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

Gays Are Second-Class Citizens?

The Christianists - and Mormoms - dishonestly allege that LGBT citizens are seeking "special rights." Even as they make these claims, they know it is a lie, but as the Proposition 8 campaign made clear, our enemies have no qualms about lying if it furthers their goals. To Hell with the Commandment against lies and bearing false witness. The reality is that gays ARE second-class citizens in a number of ways. Amy Balliet, the founder of JointheImpact.com, has a partial list of the ways in which we are not afforded equality under the civil laws. Here is her list of ways (all of which apply in Virginia) we are deprived of equal protection under the law via 365gay.com:

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1. We can not fight for our country without hiding who we are;
2. In many states (like the recent law in Arkansas) We can not adopt a displaced child in need of a home and safety;
3. In many states, we can still be fired because we are gay;
4. My rights in Washington do not stand when I cross the border to Idaho and, therefore, if my partner were to fall ill on a cross country trip, she would be alone in the hospital and I would be powerless;
5. Partners cannot share insurance in many states;
6. In many states, people can be murdered because of their sexuality, but their murderer will not be tried for committing a hate crime;
7. A loving couple can share a home, but if one passes, that home can be taken from the other in states where shared property rights are not available;
8. Finally, a couple can share their lives, share expenses, share good times and bad over many years, but they still cannot gain the equal protections and recognition that two strangers can in one drunken night in Vegas: 2 Strangers + 1 20 minute ceremony + $50 + 10 shots of tequila = Holy Matrimony and 1st Class Protections Under the Law,
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Putting aside the lies and untruths our enemies use, the other thing that is amazing is their expectation that we should just allow ourselves to be abused and mistreated. As Shane at Land of Savages notes, they act as if we should be almost thankful for the way we are denigrated and made less than equal:

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What's most alarming is the misunderstanding of the legal jeopardy gay people find themselves in. What I gather from most anti-gay posts is a reversal of who they feel is being discriminated against. Apparently, if a gay person wants to protest the LDS church for largley funding the recent amendments in Arizona and California, they are somehow bigots and filled with hate. Apparently, these amendments that singled out and continue to exclude gay couples from being able to be married should have been met by the gay community with quick acceptance of the majority's infinite wisdom, and that we sh0uld also feel lucky their tolerance of us includes actually speaking with us at our places of work and a deeper gratitude for not being fired or arrested.

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I honestly don't understand what these religious groups expect gay people to do. Do they honestly feel we should give our money to their businesses despite what they later do with it? Are we to sit quietly by while they take away our ability to protect our families or adopt children? Are we supposed to accept that they know God or Nature better than us and to accept their ideas as unshakeable? The answer is no, of course. This is our country and our government, too.