As candidate for president of the United States, is it ideal Mitt Romney is of Mormon faith? Politics aside, I am weary to vote for the former governor in this election based mainly around his faith.
    I have tried my hardest to look at this situation from a vantage point not skewed by bias; yet I continuously come to the conclusion his Mormon faith is detrimental in earning my vote in the upcoming election.
I believe in the separation of church and state, and I feel being able to exercise those rights freely should not overflow into the roles, lives and opinions of government.
When John F. Kennedy was questioned whether his Catholicism would interfere in his duties as president, he commented elegantly, “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party candidate for president who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.”
I feel as if Mitt Romney’s faith, however, contradicts one of the most basic statements our constitution has to offer, in that “all men are created equal.”
In matters of appointing Supreme Court Justices, the interpreters of the Constitution, the president has the right to nominate whom he sees fit for the position, and if he uses his faith to make his decision then I believe his judgment will be severely clouded in his choice.
If he chooses to go the route of JFK and openly not let his faith interfere with his job as president (if elected), I sincerely respect that attribute of humility and wish all the more power to him.
See, there is a reason religion and government should stay separate entities. There are many religions out there with core beliefs that contradict the line previously quoted.
In the case of the LGBT community and gay people in general, there are many religions that oppose people of that sexual orientation altogether.
Mitt Romney’s faith is one that utterly opposes homosexual behavior of any kind. It was estimated at least half of the funding (out of approximately $40 million) that promoted California’s “prop 8” legislation, which eliminated the rights of same-sex couples from pursuing marriage, came from the Mormon Church and with over 45 percent of outside-state contributions coming straight from Utah, according to nytimes.com.
The church adamantly supported the legislation, even creating a video, among others, on whether gays and lesbians deserve to be happy by saying, “The argument of happiness is really just a diversion,” according to preservethemarriage.org.
It’s rather disturbing, the lengths the Mormon church will go to promote the word of its church president, yet Mitt Romney has been associated with this hatred and bigotry for many decades now.
Whether he believes the church’s stance on every issue (including the subject of Mormons, prior to 1978, denying African-Americans the rights to certain temple ordinances deemed necessary for salvation, but that is an entirely different argument in itself) or not is none of my business.
It does, however, leave me with a bad taste in my mouth knowing he can see these qualities and still want to associate himself with it.
The Mormon faith is on shaky ground with me logically, rationally and especially spiritually. We live in a day and age where virtually any piece of knowledge we want to gain is at our fingertips.
It pains me to see a man as smart as Mitt Romney have the potential to let his faith, however one views it, interfere negatively with one of the most impactful jobs a human can undertake on this planet.