This weekend I am participating in a blogswarm for Blog Against Theocracy. I have a post about a personal experience with theocracy that I'll have up later in the weekend, but in the meantime I found this disturbing and scary post by Cliffs' friend Taylor Marsh.

There has been alot of discussion about Mormonism and the Church of Latter Day Saints since Governor Romney threw his hat in the ring, and I believe any discussion of his candidacy will include questions about his religion. It shouldn't have to be this way. For me, the question is not just moral values but also tolerance, and being religious guarantees you neither. Moral values are not necessarily encompassed by or germinated from a religion, but our current political situation dictates that it will be discussed.

In the immortal words of Arnold Vinnick:

"I don't see how we can have a separation of Church & State in this government, if you have to pass a religious test, to get in this government.

And I want to warn everyone in the press & all the voters out there, If you demand expressions of Religious Faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to.

They won't all lie to you, but a lot of them will, and it will be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes.

I'm not going to make a judgement on Mormonism. I've known Mormons. Some I've liked, some I haven't. When my parents home was destroyed after Hurricane Andrew, they could not stop talking about the Mormon volunteers who showed up out of nowhere and did massive amounts of work helping them clean up. They would not even take a bottle of water in payment. Others I have known were just.... well, the polite word I would use is "squirrelly".

But you could take the above paragraph and insert "Catholics" or "Protestants" or "Jews" and I'd probably have stories on either side about them too.

The religion isn't the point. What happened to Taylor could happen (and probably does) if the people were squirrelly Catholics. (Bill Donahue anyone?)

The point is the intolerance, the blinders-on-tight view of my way being the only way and damned if I won't do everything in my power to stop you from going your way.

And once they start getting their way, they don't want to ever step back.