Via America BLog Gay

On Mormons and the hypocrisy of "religious freedom"

By John Aravosis 

Excellent commentary from a reader, named "A reader in Colorado," in response to my earlier post about whether it's okay for liberals not to want to vote for a Mormon Republican.

You didn't get the memo John.

Liberals and the non-religious don't get religious freedom. Such freedoms are only for conservative Christians and occasionally certain kinds of conservatives practitioners of Judaism.

Christian conservatives, for example, object to gays getting married, so gays can't get married. That's their religious freedom.

Christian conservatives demand they don't have to follow the rules others have to follow and to be allowed to deny their employees birth control, question them about their private sexual practices as employees, and fire them. They're conservative, so that's their religious freedom.

Many liberals both desire and demand that states and the Federal government recognize same sex marriage and sign same sex marriage licenses out of their religious convictions concerning equality.

They're liberals, though - so they have no religious freedom and no say in the matter.

The problem with Romney is that Mormonism, no matter how out of the mainstream, is conservative.

That means he gets every freedom about his religion, including how to impose it on other people, and as a non-conservative, or non-religious person, you just, uh, DON'T.

It's not that mormons get to do things against other people and they get to hide if you have a problem with what they do, the problem is that you aren't a right wing religious conservative so you just get to shut up about it. Another right wing religionist would have, and has had, every power to question Romney's religion.

That is the true double standard here. Not about Romney's religion versus Obama's ethnic heritage. It's about only right wing religionists in this country having any kind of religious privileges whatsoever.

Until we recognize and have a national outcry against only conservatives having religious freedom while no one else does and actually having liberals loudly demanding their own religious freedom, nothing about this will change. Because it's only with lopsided religious freedom - with some having it all, others having none of it - that these lopsided power structures exist.

Right wing religionists have special rights, including rights in the media to tell you what you must do to observe their religion, even if you aren't part of it at all. 

The true question that needs to be asked is why do only conservative religionists get any religious freedom or political or media consideration in this country?