[politics] A bit more from me on Romney and Huckabee, and the tolerance of atheists

I don't hold any brief against Mormonism at all, no more or less than I do any other religion. From a secularist point of view, it's all arbitrary doctrine which only makes sense seen through the lens of faith. My support for the right of you and anyone else to hold that lens of faith of absolute, whatever my opinions of it.

I find some people's doctrines more objectionable than others, but I find some people's food choices more objectionable as well. So what? I am required to neither pray nor eat as my fellow citizens do. One of my most profound objections to religion in politics is that it produces candidates like Romney and Huckabee whose rhetoric (and presumably beliefs) quite explicitly excludes me as an atheist from political and cultural equality.

Still, what I find fascinating here (and why I keep linking to these Romney stories) is this emerging clash of doctrines. "My religion is true and yours is a nasty cult" is the barely-concealed subtext. It's been implicit in the religious pandering of the Republican party since Reagan's team first began politicizing abortion to get out the vote in the late 1970s. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, et cetera.

The deepest irony is that it's secularists and atheists who won't judge Romney on the specifics of his religious beliefs. Only his own voters will. Tolerance is universal or it is non-existent.