Perry, Romney and the Cult of Religion

The big story this weekend is the brouhaha about the Perry supporter who slammed Romney’s Mormon religion as a cult.

While Perry has tripped all over himself distancing his campaign from that big mouthed supporter, the news media has tripped all over itself carrying this story and trying to find out what peoples’ opinions are about whether Mormonism is or is not a cult, or even could be called Christian.

I think that is the wrong question, and the wrong position that the press should be taking.

The Constitution of the United States prohibits any religious test for public office in the government of the US, and the 14th Amendment extends that prohibition to the State and local governments as well. This is the only mention of religion in the original document and religion isn’t mentioned otherwise until one looks into the first of the ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights. That worthy Amendment further places this subject out of bounds by forbidding the influence of religion in making rules that either favor or disfavor religion in how our government and our democracy operates.

Yet, in this most crazy, insane of Presidential races, what is the most important criteria the right wing can come up with in deciding what individual will carry their party’s banner into the general election?

It is who can be the most right wing, fundamentalist, crazily insane religious nut possible! Remember that supporter of Perry’s? He even went so far as to say that he couldn’t vote for anyone who wasn’t a Christian, that he’d rather vote for an INcompetent Christian than a competent NON-Christian!

If there was ever any doubt as to just how insane the right wing has become, I think that puts the final nail in that particular coffin.

In a period of time in which the US and the world is on the brink of a double-dip recession that could easily sink into an actual Depression, the world is sliding into what is to be an increasingly hot period caused by mostly human industrial pollution, wars and violence is as much as ever before a commonly used method of settling disputes and the American Republican Party can only talk about social issues that offend their religious sensibilities and how religiously fundamentalist their nominee must be?

From what I’ve seen, the Democratic Party hasn’t been very smart about countering any of that craziness. The one thing that the press should be doing is asking why Romney’s religion has anything to do with his ability to perform the duties of the office of the President of the US. Yet, they are asking the question that stays within the bounds of how the Republicans have set the debate, giving the impression that it is a valid debate!

Perhaps our only hope of waking up the American people really is that group of kids occupying Wall Street.

Robert Ahrens

Rockville