Romney, Lawrence O'Donnell, Anti-Mormon Rants

This is a note about Milt Romney, Lawrence O'Donnell, Mormon-bashing and my father's broken nose.

I intend to vote for anyone nominated by the Democrats for president. I'm happy with all of the Democratic candidates, whom I consider a talented group.* The Republican field is something else, but at least four could arguably lead the country with vigor and competence, including, in particular, McCain, Romney, Huckabee, and Giuliani. I find Huckabee's populism surprisingly appealing, but his preacher routine creepy. Giuliani is the most scary of the bunch (do we really want a smarter version of Bush?), and unfortunately, all of the Republicans are expected to attack the right to a legal abortion. The only Republican I would consider voting for would be McCain, because he has been a good leader on issues such as campaign finance reform and torture, as he is in protecting consumers and taxpayers.

Early on, I was intrigued with Romney's campaign. By any objective evaluation, Romney was a good governor of Massachusetts, and is impressive in many other areas. But in running for president, he took a sharp turn to the right, and began giving these terrible stump speeches, designed to appeal the most narrow-minded, bigoted and stupid elements of the Republican primary voters. At the end of the day, however, the biggest hurdle he faces is the narrow-minded and bigotry of voters, when it comes to the Mormon religion.

I pretty much expected to see Romney have trouble with the Republican rank and file. I have been a bit disappointed to see the way some of the liberals have engaged in Mormon-bashing. Lawrence O'Donnel's "I don't hate Mormons. Some of my best friends are Mormons," post in the HuffPost was a gloves off rant against Mormons, that I found offensive, in a personal way.

My father was Mormon. I was raised in my mother's faith, as a Methodist. My mother disliked the Mormon faith as passionately as she loved my father, and I grew up knowing next to nothing about the Mormon religion. One day, as a child, I was ridiculing some literature I had found about the Mormon religion, to my father. He took me aside and told me that that every religion could be made to look ridiculous. He said that seemingly absurd doctrines and beliefs were not very important, and that one had to consider more generally the values that each religion espoused, and the way it comforted or improved the lives of its believers.

My father grew up in a small and poor ranching town during in the Depression. His mother was very poor, and she converted after being helped by Mormons. Growing up, he got into a number of fights, for simply being a Mormon. His broken nose was a reminder of this. He later worked his way through college, enlisted in World War II, where he served in the infantry, was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. He went on to law school, and eventually helped found the city of Bellevue, Washington, where he was elected mayor, and later became a judge.

There are plenty of reasons to oppose Mitt Romney's candidacy. But his religion is not one of them. Would O'Donnell have opposed Mo Udall's candidacy on the same grounds? Should the Democrats dump Harry Reid?

My father was right. Every religion can look absurd, from the outside. A literal reading of the Bible gives a lot of room for ridicule, and even more so are the many highly visible spokespersons for the Christian religion (James Dobson, Pope Benedict XVI, Ann Coulter, etc). Are my children "Jewish" because their mother is Jewish? We are taught relentlessly to hate Islamic fundamentalists. There are plenty of wacky things to notice about many other religions, sects and philosophies.

I agree with O'Donnell that we need to acknowledge both freedoms "of" and "from" religion. For non-believers, it is a mystery why anyone would buy any of this hocus pocus, and it is an open question whether or not at any given moment religions have on balance promoted war or peace, love or hate. But for now, many people, including Romney, are not likely to abandon their religious beliefs, both because they sense something fundamentally wholesome and uplifting in the faith, and they love the community that shares the faith.

If the Democrats want to be a majority party, they should reject religious bigotry. Romney has said a lot of appalling things on the campaign trail. But no one should hold his religion against him.

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*With the exception of the former Senator from Alaska.

Follow James Love on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamie_love

Comments

[zugel]

finally...someone making sense.

[maggipost]

Your blog struck a chord with me. My Jewish family has always been fond of members of the LDS faith. During the early years of the century, my grandfather found himself alone, broke, and very ill in Logan Utah. He was literally taken in by a Mormon family who, instead of giving him food in exchange for the chores he was physically incapable of performing, nursed him back to health and sent him on his way with their blessings. All his life he graciously invited young Mormon missionaries to come in, sit down, have a glass of water and talk as long as they wished. We had Mormon neighbors who shared their jams and jellies with us, one who made me a beautiful quilt that I still have, Mormon friends who took me to the classes they held in knitting, crochet work and the like.
Yes, the tenets of their religion are odd, but probably not so odd to someone -- like Romney -- who was raised in the faith. Are they anymore fantastic than the tenets of other religions, when you come right down to it?
And as to O'Donnel's rant against the racism of the Mormon faith ... give me a break. The Bible itself is pretty racist. I assume (perhaps I should not) that O'Donnel is a Catholic. What are his feelings about the damage done to Jews over 2000 years by the Catholic church? Does anyone know?

[Intenzity]

This is the oldest trick in the book - align yourself with "God", get people to buy into your plans, and when anyone disagrees throw yourself on the cross of religious intolerance and say you are being persecuted.

O'Donnell brought facts, you bring a sentimental rememberence. Yes, Dad probably did get his ass kicked for being Mormon in Texas, and that is unfortunate. But the reasons that he was assualted, you want to attribute to overall religious intolerence, rather than the specifics of the Mormon church.

Choosing to be a Mormon means you are conciously taking a giant step away from the physically proveable reality-based world that we live in. There were metal-using peoples in North America, they wrote in Egyptian, there were elephants here in NA co-existing with humans, the original american peoples were of Jewish origin...I could go on for paragraphs of the just-not-true fictions that are the doctrines of that church and are easily refuteable with hard data supplied by sciences like Geology, Genetics, Acheology, Linguistics, etc etc etc.

No one is saying you cannot choose to believe those things, there is (still) freedom of religion in the US. However, freedom of religion is not freedom from ridicule. So if you choose to align yourself with a belief system a nudge away from Scientology on the laughter scale, do not act indignant or claim persecution when other rational, reasonable adults think you are a joke and refuse to take you seriously, or even avoid you for renting out your head to fairy tails that make the world work out for you better.

But I have noticed that is part of the appeal of Mormonism, that underdog, we are rising up against our persecution sense of belonging that helps the believers feel as thought they a part of something bigger than themselves. Its the same way Fox says it fights against the liberal media to make the neo-cons feel like they are fighting the good fight against the masses together. Same tactic. Neither are true, but it is the same tactic.

[mommadona]

"He said that seemingly absurd doctrines and beliefs were not very important, and that one had to consider more generally the values that each religion espoused, and the way it comforted or improved the lives of its believers."

The fact of the matter is, if he considers the doctrines absurd, he just proved your mother's point. Organized Religion is based on nothing but faith.

The Mormon Religion is a quasi-governmental organization.

The Mormon hierarchy is financially tied to some pretty creepy things. That includes Pay-Per-View Porn Production, just to name one.

"Faith of our Fathers" with an asterik that states *as long as we get our planet in space and become gods the way we want and open up a big old restuarant in the sky. By and by.

If you plan to defend a faith, by all means make sure you know the facts all around and understand exactly what it is you are personally defending.

There is no "being slightly pregnant" on this one.

[oldpotsmuggler]

As far as I know no one has ever bothered to take my name off of the membership roles of the Mormon Church. Born in Salt Lake City 60 years ago the odds certainly were in favor of Mormonism but I trailed away from it at least by the time I was 18. In my fourth year of college the draft lottery was started and I drew a very high number so Viet Nam no longer was a concern to me. Before that I could have gotten an extra two year reprieve not available to any non Mormon by spending two years in the mission field. I heard stories about how this advantageous arrangement was negotiated for by the Mormon Church and certainly tended to believe them.

On top of that I managed to witness the Mormon Church become the only religion in history to be awarded and to hold the Winter Olympics. When one was needed, Mitt Romney was the hand picked candidate of Mormon heirarchy to step in and "rescue" an Olympic organizing effort that had become shaky.

I readily admit that it's highly unlikely that I would ever find a Mormon presidential candidate whom I would trust with my vote. Mitt Romney has shown me nothing to make me think that I or anyone else should look at him as an exception to that very reasonable rule.

(If I had paid better attention I would know if I am quoting correctly but I'll give it a shot anyway- "And Zion shall be established in the mountain top in the latter days and shall rule the world".)

[charon]

you need to watch the rant a little closer, or without prejudicial blinders on your eyes. In his "rant," O'Donnell did not generically condemn Mormonism. He did take Romney to task for praising, uncritically, "the religion of [his] fathers."

Specifically, their treatment of African-Americans as inferior, and their practice of polygamy, and the use of politically convenient "revelations" allegedly made by God to the president of the church, which rationalized the change of church policy, as opposed to the use of reason to realize, e.g., African-Americans should have full status. This worked coincidently well to keep the church from having to admit it was ever wrong about anything.

Why don't you, Mr. son-of-a-founder of Bellevue, WA, address the specifics of O'Donnell's charges rather than waste our time refuting strawman arguments that O'Donnell never made? Is it because you lack the intellectual resources to even understand his argument, or is it your faith that blinds you?

[maddogbitesback]

Why hold anyone's religion against him or her. After all some Jews believe that God gave Israel to them and they took it back despite the complaints of the people who had been living there for millenia and had property deeds. And Christians hated Jews and felt it was okay to deprive them of rights Christians had. Then there is Osama bin Laden. He feels he has rights too. And George Bush and a lot of other Americans believe God speaks to them.

I hold anyone to a standard which does involve thinking about their religion. Mormonism is not one of the world's great religions and it never will be. It was developed by a flim flam man who thought he should be able to get rich and powerful and have lots of chicks pleasing him even when he was an old old man. If your religion says you should legislate against abortion and legislate beheading and cutting off hands or that God chose you then you can't represent America. Period.

[HeevenSteven]

"All religions can look absurd from the outside"

From the inside as well James, as I discovered in my teens, but most insiders refuse to look.