this speech by mitt romney, which i also heard on radio, was one of the finest and best speeches i have ever heard.
mitt of course did talk about religion, but in such a way as to nullify anyone’s thoughts or ideas that his presidency would be geared in any way to the mormon or any other religion.
his words, gestures, etc, were really so spectacular; right in the exact place they should have been at.

congratulations to the candidate on a job really well done; keep it up, and give us some more of the same. OUTSTANDING TALK, to say the least.

tom anglin
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Charlie

Tom: You assume too much. You first assume I am an atheist, which I am not. I am best described as a Deist like that great evil heathen Jefferson before me. And it is important because this is not just a nation of people who believe in any faith, but people who don’t believe as well. Further, given the fact that god is not part of the Constitution, that the Constitution was meant to create a governmet based on the reason of man, not the tenets of a bible, it is a grave mistake and danger to inject Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other faith into the governance.

Have your faith, practice your faith, and you are free to do so. You are free to sing it from the mountain, and the sidewalk, or whatever. This is fine, it is, in fact great, and I celebrate your right to be religious, to choose your faith, and express it as you see fit. However, it is neither your place to restrict me by law to the tenets of your faith, nor do you have a right for your religious beliefs to be recognized above anyone else’s.

I am a secularist, but as I hinted at in the post above, that does not make me an atheist. Secularism does not preclude faith, and for some of us, we believe it strengthens the rights of all Americans to practice their faith without persecution. The driving force behind secularism is to ensure that religion is kept not from the public sphere, but instead from the governmental sphere where it is subject to abuse by power hungry politicians, where it is subject to persecution by other faiths endorsed by those who govern, etc.

Faith is a precious part of many people’s lives, and I believe strongly that letting the damn break, by letting the Religious Right have their way, by turning this government into a Christian one is the beginning of the end. Look at the Catholic/Protestant conflicts of the past; no matter how much you may want to say that there can be a unifying religion, it’s just not so, and if we let God into the government, it will at first go unquestioned by any but the secularists. But then there will be a question as to which God? Which Bible? Should it be the methodist God? The Catholic God? The Jewish one?

And yes, you may say they are all the same God, but they are each worshipped in differing ways, and eventually faiths will suffer at the cost of whatever faith prevails in this question.

And that’s when religious persecution begins.

Love God all you want. Go to a sidewalk and preach about him, but for my sake and yours, keep him out of the halls of Congress, keep him from our judicial bench, and save him from the pitfalls of the White House.