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?
