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Kepler
Joined: 24 Sep 2007
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:45 am Post subject: Is Romney dicriminated against more than other candidates? |
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By Doug Robinson
Deseret Morning News
Published: Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008 12:58 a.m. MST
I missed the memo that said it's A-OK to make disparaging and often erroneous statements about Mormons.
Apparently, they are fair game.
Sure, these are hypersensitive times, when name-calling or perceived bias against any group will get you the Don Imus treatment, but you get a free shot with Mormons. You can say what you want about them with impunity.
If you denigrate a racial group, you're racist.
If you denigrate women, you're sexist.
If you denigrate Mormons, you're hip.
No one would openly suggest that you shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton because a woman can't lead the country, especially an ornery one.
Nobody would dare say that you shouldn't vote for Barack Hussein Obama because he's black, or of Muslim descent, or because he has a name that sounds like a terrorist. One Clinton worker even apologized for alluding to Obama's use of drugs as a youth, so apparently it's wrong to disparage former drug users, too.
But nobody is shy about saying you shouldn't vote for Romney simply because he's a Mormon. It doesn't even register on the PC-O-Meter.
Just like that, 6 million Americans have been virtually disqualified from running for president. They've been rendered second-class citizens. They're foreigners living in America. They face a glass ceiling.
How un-American is that?
It would be one thing if most of those who oppose Romney did so because they disagreed with his politics or character. But Romney is one of the few candidates who has no character issues, a "squeaky clean" man who has a distinguished record of accomplishments, success and service, with no divorces, no affairs, no scandal. The only thing opponents can say about him is that he belongs to a church they don't understand.
A Harvard law professor called Romney the most qualified of all the candidates and "the perfect candidate for this moment in time." But there is his Mormonism, he noted.
Even the self-styled PC chief of police, Al Sharpton, once jumped in on the action, saying, "As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways."
Mormons don't believe in God?
For his penance, all Sharpton had to do was endure a family home evening in Utah.
It's open season on Mormons. A few days ago, Miami Herald columnist Dan Le Batard stated on ESPN and in the newspaper that part of the reason fired coach Cam Cameron failed was because he got stuck with a Mormon quarterback � not a rookie quarterback (which he is) but a Mormon quarterback.
"And you'll have a hard time finding a leader anywhere in sports who was as unlucky this year as Cameron," Le Batard said, noting that because of injuries, Cameron was forced to play "a United Nations huddle of a Mormon quarterback, Mexican receiver, Samoan fullback and some guy named Lekekekkkkerkker."
Now Mormons are foreigners?
Ignorance makes no difference. You can say Mormons have four wives or that they aren't Christian, and no one cares.
Imagine the uproar if Le Batard had written that the Dolphins suffered because they had to play a black quarterback for part of the season? Or a Catholic?
The Salt Lake Tribune has had a field day for more than a week since learning that Mike Leavitt and some of his like-minded cohorts met early in the morning to discuss Mormon theology and governance while he was Utah's governor. What if it had been a Bible study?
Nobody seems to mind when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says his religion "defines me." Or when Obama says his church guides "my own values and my own beliefs."
People worry that Romney will take his orders from his church leaders. They don't worry that Obama will take orders from his church, whose "10-point vision" includes two references to its "non-negotiable commitment to Africa," with no mention of America. Oh, and the church statement begins by noting on the Trinity United Church of Christ Web site, "We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black."
It's a different set of rules for some out there. You can print newspaper cartoons disparaging Mormons. You can harass their families as they walk to their biannual conference with all sorts of foul language. When someone commits a crime, you can note the criminal's religion, but only if he's Mormon. You can make them a one-liner on Leno. Good luck reconciling all this with the paranoid political correctness that's so in vogue.
Meanwhile, the most politically correct presidential election field ever assembled � a woman, a black, a Mormon, a Baptist, etc. � has gone politically incorrect, but only when it comes to you know who.
http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695242228,00.html
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:52 am Post subject: |
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"And you'll have a hard time finding a leader anywhere in sports who was as unlucky this year as Cameron," Le Batard said, noting that because of injuries, Cameron was forced to play "a United Nations huddle of a Mormon quarterback, Mexican receiver, Samoan fullback and some guy named Lekekekkkkerkker."
Now Mormons are foreigners?
Ignorance makes no difference. You can say Mormons have four wives or that they aren't Christian, and no one cares.
Imagine the uproar if Le Batard had written that the Dolphins suffered because they had to play a black quarterback for part of the season? Or a Catholic?
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In the last paragraph, he suggests that disparaging other groups besides Mormon's would not be tolerated. But in the actual quote from Le Batard, Mexicans and Samoans are disparaged along with Mormons. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:55 am Post subject: |
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When someone commits a crime, you can note the criminal's religion, but only if he's Mormon. |
I wonder if someone would be able to provide an article from the mainstream press which mentions a criminal's Mormon faith while reporting on a crime that had nothing to do with Mormonism. |
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Czarjorge

Joined: 01 May 2007 Location: I now have the same moustache, and it is glorious.
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 7:40 am Post subject: |
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If a political candidate had a history of mental illness it would be referenced constantly. If a political candidate was a member of a cult or the Church of Scientology it would be reference constantly. Mormonism is firmly in that category, regardless of the benign nature most of its practitioners seem to have.
Most religions have a fantasy aspect that is hard to believe and must be taken on faith. There is a limit though, and that limit seems to be getting your bible from magic stones that only one guy can read when they're in his hat, or believing that bad emotions come from the souls of aliens who were killed in Earth's volcanoes. |
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Tiger Beer

Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 8:47 am Post subject: |
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I disagree.
To me, it seems Romney is just as electable as anyone else. I mean I heard just the same about Clinton and Obama, so it's not that strange that a Mormon would get the same thing.
Romney's bigger problem is he's very shifty, seems to lie all the time, and loves negative attack ads that seriously spin the truth against his fellow opponents.
A lot of voters seem to be overlooking the mormon thing. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 8:52 am Post subject: |
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A lot of voters seem to be overlooking the mormon thing. |
From what I can tell, most of the anti-Mormon stuff in this campaign is coming from the Religious-Right types in the GOP, specifically those associated with the Huckabee campaign. Yet the article makes it sound as if the whole society is violently anti-Mormon. |
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 10:06 am Post subject: |
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On the other hand wrote: |
In the last paragraph, he suggests that disparaging other groups besides Mormon's would not be tolerated. But in the actual quote from Le Batard, Mexicans and Samoans are disparaged along with Mormons. |
Nobody's disparaged in that quote. He was pointing out that it seems that Mormons do not seem to be considered Americans.
Tiger Beer seems to be unaware of the polls indicating a huge percentage of voters have stated they would never vote for a Mormon and also the types of ads that Romney's been involved in himself.
Oh, and since when has one of the leading newspapers in Utah not been mainstream press? |
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Tiger Beer

Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 10:21 am Post subject: |
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CentralCali wrote: |
Tiger Beer seems to be unaware of the polls indicating a huge percentage of voters have stated they would never vote for a Mormon and also the types of ads that Romney's been involved in himself. |
Generally speaking, there will always be voters who won't vote for all kinds of politicians for all kinds of reasons. But you make him sound like he's a Dodd, Kucinich, Thompson, Biden, Richardson, etc. who aren't getting votes and Romney is among them for being a mormon.
But a sizeable portion of Republicans already DID vote for Romney in IA, NH and WY. How do you explain that? |
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Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 12:07 pm Post subject: |
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The author asks whether Mormons are not foreigners in the United States. No, they are not. But neither are they more than a mere minority.
And the article fails to mention that Mormons tend to discriminate against non-Mormons at least as much as non-Mormons discriminate against Mormons. Only very recently, for example, did Mormons recognize that blacks are human beings, too. They take other strange positions. And they tend to behave exclusively as well. How do they expect non-Mormons to view them?
In any case, I grow tired of "the discrimination card" in the national political discourse. In modern American politics we have seen a Catholic and a Quaker president; a Jewish, two African-American, and two female SecStates; currently, a Mormon is the Senate Majority Leader and a woman controls the House; and, at this time, it looks like either a woman or an African-American will win the Democratic Party's nomination for president 2008. And let us not forget to mention the Supreme Court's composition. In my own experience, I served under a no-nonsense, badass African-American commander in the Marine Corps -- where Marines have been told since the end of the Second World War, when Truman integrated the armed forces, "there are no black or white Marines; all Marines are green."
We have been disapproving of and actively moving against all forms of racial, religious, sexual, etc. discrimination in the United States for decades now. It may not be going as fast as radicals would like. But things are certainly moving. So I want Romney and his supporters to give us a break with the discrimination card, please. It will not help his candidacy. |
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 2:28 pm Post subject: |
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Gopher wrote: |
Only very recently, for example, did Mormons recognize that blacks are human beings, too. |
Liar. |
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Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 2:44 pm Post subject: |
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Uh-huh. Fighting words are cheap on an anonymous internet forum, coward.
In any case, clearly you know nothing about the Mormon Church, its beliefs regarding blacks, and how it has only very recently allowed blacks to serve as priests, etc. |
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:37 pm Post subject: |
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Gopher wrote: |
Uh-huh. Fighting words are cheap on an anonymous internet forum, coward.
In any case, clearly you know nothing about the Mormon Church, its beliefs regarding blacks, and how it has only very recently allowed blacks to serve as priests, etc. |
Liars are the cowards. You posted an obvious lie and I correctly identified you as a liar therefore. You said that the Mormon church just recently came to the conclusion that Blacks are human beings. That is a falsehood. The Mormon church has always considered them to be humans. And, FYI, I know quite a lot about my own church. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:42 pm Post subject: |
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Blacks were burned by god for sins and not able to climb the ladder of the church. That is explicit racism. This was reversed in 1978
Will Smith converted to Scientology. I guess Utah is full? |
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Milwaukiedave
Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Location: Goseong
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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I would vote against Romney not only because he is Mormon, but also because of his attitudes and beliefs. That being said, I'd rather see him win the nomination because he is a weak candidate. |
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igotthisguitar

Joined: 08 Apr 2003 Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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No. |
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