I think Henry the 8th started a whole new church when he defied the Pope. I’m sure you could find many leaders in history who did things based upon what the Pope actually told them. A few crusades some to mind (yeah, there was a chance for loot, too). Has it happened recently, though?
Religious leaders tell people to do things every single day. Isn’t there a story in the bible itself about some prophet being told to sacrifice his own son and he almost did it? Isn’t the moral of the story that you must obey god.
Don’t act like it couldn’t happen, because it could and has. But the important question is would it happen with Romney? It is a fair question.
Really? You think Romney’s going to be an absolute monarch?
:rolleyes:
You’re rolling your eyes at me, yet you had to harken back to Henry VIII and the Crusades? That’s amusing.
I rolled my eyes because you are deliberately acting stupid. Did you not read where I wrote, “Has it happened recently, though?”? You are claiming it has never happened nor could it happen. I’ve provided examples of where it has. So, obviously your claim that is has never happened has been proven false. Please provide a cite where people from the age I have described have ‘evolved’ in such a way that they disregard their religious leaders when it conflicts with their secular duties. Otherwise, I can assume that it could happen again given the right circumstances.
Actually, I seem to recall asking a particular question about Mormons in the United States. I’m not stupid nor am I acting that way. What is stupid is the irrational (read: bigoted) and asinine attack on the man for his religion. As I, along with some others, posted, that was wrong when attacks were made on Kennedy for his religion and it’s wrong now to attack Romney for his religion.
Uzi and Monty, you two need to get a room.
This is not the room you need.
Just knock it off before you start incurring Warnings.
[ /Moderating ]
Ah, so any questions are an attack now?
And if my religious leader believes that it is our duty to start a nuclear Armageddon to wipe out all the non-believers, and I am running for the President of the US, you wouldn’t at least be curious enough to ask me if I plan on following my leaders orders? Not a fair question, huh?
Or, if I’m a Muslim and I pray 5 times a day on time all the time, you have no concerns that during a crisis that I’ll do the same thing instead of responding to said crisis and wouldn’t ask that question of me?
Again, not a fair question?
For someone on the SD you are mighty non-inquisitive.
Some people consider inquisitiveness to be bigotry. Deciding which candidate to vote for is predicting which candidate will govern better in the future. It seems perhaps one should not vote at all, because doing so is pre-judging a person’s future actions. And most of us can’t see the future. A candidate’s past performance is an indicator, but not a perfect predictor. What about when, during a campaign, a candidate retracts several of his previous stances? Now how do we predict his future? To evaluate his moral decision-making process is bigotry. It is therefore imperative that we stay home on election day.
Some here pretend to believe that the likelyhood of a world leader changing his stance based on what his religion dictates is on par with the likelyhood of a building accidentally “flying off into outer space.” I admire your guts getting into an arguement with someone who uses your opponent’s tactics. If his past performance is an indicator, he will exaggerate your stance so that he can debate against a nutjob straw man who he will call Uzi. Pretending that “you think Romney’s going to be an absolute monarch” is only the beginning. Evaluating your opponent by the same criteria he advocates we use exclusively, I would predict that he continues to distort your stance rather than defending his own.
Uzi and Rhodes, you have each been told to back off yet you continue to make snide comments about other posters.
I strongly urge you both to find something else to do with your time until you can post without turning this into a personal feud.
If you continue this behavior, you will be Warned.
[ /Moderating ]
Tom,
If you look at the time stamps, my last post was minutes after your first warning. I didn’t see it until after hitting ‘submit’. I’m not the quickest of writers.
But I can assure you that my thought process wasn’t intended to be hostile even though it may not have seemed that way from my words. My intent was to question what I perceived as the deliberate obtuseness of Monty and to address the OP as to what a fair question would be for a politician who says he believes one thing and acts in a different manner from those beliefs.
I would like to ask a different question, which I think is pertinent.
If Romney were elected and then, say, signed a bill into law for federal recognition of gay marriage, what would average Mormons think of his action? Not whether it’s right or wrong, but whether it’s a betrayal of Mormonism?
The comparison to Catholicism is apt in some ways, but it might be important to compare the American Catholic experience to the American Mormon experience. Do they have the same level of fidelity to an authority figure?
Catholics, in my experience, seem to routinely reject the pope when it serves their purposes. For example, the pope holds the death penalty as wrong, yet American Catholics do not all agree. The pope did not call the invasion of Iraq a just war, yet some American Catholics supported it. I’ve heard that the Vatican is not particularly impressed with the fidelity of American Catholics to the Church’s teachings.
Is the same true of the LDS? Does being a Mormon mean something similar to being a Catholic when it comes to predictions about what happens if religious and political life come in conflict?
Mormons, in my experience, seem to routinely reject previous prophets when it serves their purposes. For example, many of my unmarried friends and family reminded me that the prophet Spencer W Kimball commanded us back in the 1980’s not to use birth control. When those same friends and family got married, they changed their mind as Kimball’s words no longer served their purpose. Similar comparisons can be made concerning racism and belief in evolution.
Mormons, in my experience, seem to routinely accept the Prophets when they address the church at General Conference, in the Ensign magazine, in the Proclamation to the World concerning the nature of family (one man and one woman), and in anti-gay-marriage statements to be read in every US congregation.
Of course, it’s impossible to identify the “average Mormon.” Some Mormons will quietly reject a statement. Some Mormons will vocally reject a statement to the point of getting themselves excommunicated. Many Mormons will probably have already agreed with the statement, and they see it as a confirmation that the statement is from God. And some Mormons will have previously disagreed with the statement but will change their mind because the Prophet (and thus God) said so.
So, you think that claiming that another poster is engaqged in “deliberate obtuseness” is not a personal attack.
I am aware that you hold the position that no person with religious beliefs can ever be trusted to behave logically, (world history notwithstanding), but when you make it a personal attack on a poster, you are over the line. I have not Warned anyone, yet, but I do want the issue to remain focused on the issues without getting sidetracked into complaints about or attacks on the posters.
[ /Modding ]
I don’t necessarily believe Romney would be taking orders from the Mormon Church. I do believe we would be ass deep in Mormons getting political positions. Bush certainly put lots of fundies in political positions they did not merit and they did poorly.
My problem is when I read about Mormonism, I can not believe that anyone could buy it. From the golden plates to becoming gods with your own planets and everything in between, I think it is a joke of a religion. Anyone who accepts it scares me. He should be laughing ,not praying. But if he buys all the church history, and can forget about about polygamy , suppression of women and blacks, and the violent history of the church, then I don’t want him for my president.
The Mormons don’t have the convenience of a long history. They can not say polygamy was a long ago cultural phenomenon that is quaint. They can not pretend that suppression of women is a historical relic. Some polygamy probably still exists. Women and blacks are still second class citizens. He would have to reject it to get my vote. (and quit being a spoiled ,rich Republican).
I’m still waiting for evidence that the man would be “taking orders” from his church on how to govern the country.
Let me get this straight. You believe that Romney would appoint a bunch of Mormons to office just because a member of a different denomination appointed a bunch of people from different denominations including a Mormon as an appeals court judge? Oh yeah, that’s logical. It sure looks, though, that if Romney’s going to follow Bush’s lead on that, then Romney’s going to appoint a bunch of people from different denominations.
What about all those politicians who believe that someone brought someone back to life, died himself, came back to life, and then flew off to heaven? Do they scare you, too? Shouldn’t they be laughing also?
I guess that rules out Protestants and Catholics for your vote, huh? Or are you going to conveniently forget their history, even their recent history.
How recent do you want to go back for examples of religious-based violence? How about the 1970s and 1980s? Oh, sorry. That was Catholic vs. Protestants, not Mormons vs. whomever.
Hmm…I don’t recall “It was quaint” being a church teaching.
Let’s see. I know plenty of Mormon women and also plenty of Catholic women yet none of them seems to be suppressed.
Really now? Maybe you’re the one conveniently ignoring facts. The LDS church prohibits its members from participating in or even advocating polygamy. Well, maybe you’re just confused as to what group Romney belongs to. He’s LDS, not FLDS.
Funny. I thought citizenship in the US was something conferred by the state, not a religion. I’m completely unaware of an LDS church teaching that women are not permitted to exercise their full rights of citizenship. To the contrary, I’m aware of some Mormon women who hold political office (even at the national level), who serve in the military as both Enlisted and Commissioned. Hey, there was even a Mormon woman as Governor of Utah!
I guess you’re not going to be voting for anyone in any elections for a while, then. After all, any religion you choose will have some of that baggage you decried above. Or is it just the Mormons you don’t want in office?
Well, you finally hit on a pretty good reason for not wanting the man in political office: you don’t like his membership in a particular political party. I’m Republican and I didn’t like the second President Bush’s politics. That’s why I didn’t want him in office and wasn’t happy with his performance in office. His religion, Methodist, had nothing to do with it. Oh, did you also forget there are “spoiled, rich” Democrats?
As in any libel case, if I’m speaking the truth then it isn’t libel. Can you say when you read his response to my argument that it was made in a manner conducive to debate?
And what I believe or don’t believe about people who are religious really has no bearing on this debate. It is a question of whether it is appropriate to ask someone if their religious beliefs will influence their decision making while in public office.
Of course I think most religious people are crazy, but then people who collect star wars figures, etc, can be just as loony. One group just happens to have more influence to inflict their brand of insanity on the rest of us, is all.
Monty has essentially said there is no reason to ask someone about their religious beliefs. I disagree, but only if the religion they belong to has very shaky and dubious origins and practices.
Example: I don’t think it is appropriate to ask Catholics as to whether they think the inquisition was a good idea. Now I might ask them as to why they stay with an organization that protects child abusers, but even then probably not unless I had a good reason as I assume that most people are against child abusers.
I might ask Romney about the churches previous stance on black people and where he stands on it. Why? Because there are still quite a few racists out there and it would be nice to know if he was one of them before I (not me specifically, as I can’t vote in the US being Canadian and all) cast a vote for him.
The argument is to look at his record. Well, people don’t have records until they actually do. And how a person acts as number 2 can be a lot different than how they act when they become number 1. Anyone who has worked for any length of time in an organization can attest to that. It is best to ask all your questions before they take the number 1 position because it is tough to do anything about it after the fact.
He has not. He has pointed out that the specific questions being posed regarding Romeny appear absurd, to him. (And he has done it in a hostile manner, which is why I also encouraged him to back off from the exchange.)
Given that Romney has held two very visible public offices, it is quite fair to look at how his beliefs were manifested in those positions. Dragging up stuff that seems odd regarding Romney’s religion or making analogies to ancient events that are not comparable to the current political situation is not.
Actually, what you believe about religious people has a direct bearing on this discussion. It prompts you to ask questions about potential actions that you would not ask about other candidates that are not based in any actions or words that they have produced, relying on guilt by association. If you cannot find anything unconstitutional or contrary to good order that Romney (or any other nationally recognized Mormon political figure) has done that was rooted in their religion, you are simply insisting that proponents of Romney defend him against accusations that arise only from your assumptions, without regard to facts.
As I think I’ve asked earlier (not having gone back over the thread), would it not be fair to ask a KKK member whether his membership in that organization would affect his judgment? Is it because it isn’t a religion that the question is fair?
And based upon my beliefs would it be fair to ask me questions on how I would treat religion, or the religious, if I was seeking a political office? Keep in mind that I work successfully in the middle east where over 90% of the people are Muslims.
The facts are that the Mormon religion didn’t allow blacks to be clerics until recently. Romney was a member before and after. When it was before then he was willing to be a member even though his religion discriminated against race. He either was okay with the practice or he didn’t like it, but the benefits outweighed the negatives. Or, he actively fought to get the policy changed. I think it is a fair question to ask even though I might not ask it. Would you be against someone asking the same question of the former KKK member running for the same office?
I would agree that it might be a fair questiuon to ask him–although given that the change in policy/doctrine occurred decades ago, I think it would be less useful than looking at his actual record regarding race relations. If the policy/doctrine was still in effect, then it would be appropriate, now, but that is not the case, here.
However, challenging a candidate simply because “your beliefs are nutty” might be allowable in the general public, but they little no point in this forum beyond mockery–which might still be allowable, but not for post after post with no answer in sight.