Here we go again, with the nonsense about making religion, a public issue incidental to an election this time from John over at Powerline: [1]
I’m getting really tired of the role that religion is playing in this year’s election campaign.
Me, I’m, I’m getting tired of all the whining about it getting tired of all the whining about it, most of which doesn’t make any sense. As I told Bruce yesterday, I am sympathetic to the anger, but the points being raised in this discussion do nothing for its resolution.
There is nothing wrong with either a voter’s or a candidate’s views on a particular issue being informed by his religion. Thus, a Quaker may vote for a candidate he perceives as pacifistic, or a candidate may take a tough anti-crime stance because his religious faith makes him sympathetic to the victims of rape, murder, assault and so on. This is very different from making a candidate’s theology, per se, into a public issue.
I say again, nonsense. ONe of the main objects of an election season, and most of the things that are attached to it, such as debates, are designed to do is to allow the voter to know the mind of the person wanting a high office. How better to do that discuss such matters as religion, which are the last I knew were supposed to be the strongest most personally held beliefs of an individual? You want to get a real inside look, there you are.
Further as I pointed out previously, on what basis would such back-and-forth be limited or eliminated? Are you really suggesting that government get involved in the situation? That would be squarely against the First Amendment, wouldn’t it?
At this stage of the game in the election cycle, the Constitution does not address what subjects should and should not be broached. The Constitution, you see, does not limit the actions of the people who are outside of government, but rather the actions of the government itself. Unless, therefore it can be pointed out where the government is involved with such attacks on Romney or anyone else for that matter on the basis of religion, what we have here is a case of free speech.
Understand… my biggest fear is the injection of judicial activism on the issue. Ask the ACLU, they’ve been making a nice living off such conflicts for many decades, now.
Which is not to say that the people, the voters, shouldn’t have a response to all of this. Observe; John rightly points out that there are a number of other issues with other religions, or more correctly, perhaps other Christian sects, which are equally if not more problematic. He asks:
Why shouldn’t Hillary Clinton, for example, be cross-examined about the Methodist Church’s “discrimination” against gays?
In that double standard, John has the big clue to the answer for his earlier question about why Mormonism in this case is the target of such inquiries; Romney is up against somebody who in reality as nothing more than a tax and attacks to bring to the table… Hillary Clinton.
Seems to me the blame for this one falls directly on the Democrats. So, too, should the consequences. on whom, specifically? John says:
This year, religion has been used negatively against Mitt Romney. But if a candidate’s religious faith has now become fair game for political attack, our public life has changed, profoundly and for the worse, with consequences that will reverberate long after 2008.
Welcome to the party, John, our public life in that area changed rather profoundly for the worse some years ago when the government started backing away from its traditional role of supporting the existing culture in the name of “diversity”. Guess which party brought that to pass?