If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you have any questions, please see my policies page or if you would like to contact me, you can do so here. You can find out more about me here. I sincerely thank you for visiting!

I want to like Mike Huckabee, I really do. While he’s far to the right of me on gay marriage and he does have prickly ethical problems, he’s more of a realist than the other GOP (or for that matter Democratic) contenders for the office of the Presidency. Plus, I like how someone that has raised less than 1/25 of what some of his competitors have raised is now kicking their butts in Iowa.

But, the issue for me in the whole GOP race is the focus on Romney’s Mormon religion and the anti-Mormonism in general that has reared its ugly head. As a kid growing up Catholic I had a hard time understanding why JFK and Al Smith had such a hard time simply because they thought Martin Luther was full of it. The same thing happened in 2004 when everyone wondered whether John Kerry was Catholic enough (man, have we come a long way or what?).

Apparently, Mike Huckabee has penned an opinion piece to run in Sunday’s NY Times questioning certain aspects of the Mormon faith while at the same time admitting he knows nothing of it. This type of hack piece should have been stopped by his handlers, but I guess they are banking on a certain percentage of Christian conservatives to be turned on by bashing the “cult” while not turning off enough people by his vile rhetoric.

Well, count me as being turned off. I am of the firm belief that the separation of church and state is absolute and is there to protect the church from the influences of the state rather than the other way ’round. I’m not electing a high priest, I’m electing a President. I care more about what he thinks about health care and tax issues than if he believes that Satan and Jesus are brothers. Yes, I am a Christian but my vote doesn’t teeter on a candidate’s views. While it’s true that someone that shares my faith is more likely to be pro-life, if they’re pro-life and Buddhist I couldn’t care less.

Maybe I’m in the minority on this one, but we’ve got to move past this. Mike, you just dropped straight to the bottom with me with this one (say hi to Rudy and Tom for me).