Monday, August 30, 2010

Religious Intolerance Has No Place In National Debate

So now rightist luminaries like Glenn Beck have moved away from their dishonest marginalization of Barack Obama as a foreign-born Muslim to re-marginalizing Obama as the wrong kind of Christian.


This is dangerous, genuine demagoguery.

Is this what the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was aiming for in his August 28th rally and speech?

Beck's American dream: a name-calling, divisive, theological battlefield.

We need mainstream religious leaders across the spectrum to condemn it.

I didn't like it when Mitt Romney's Mormonism was made an issue in the 2008 election primaries, and it also makes me uneasy when some candidates campaign on their faith, because somewhere in that is a message that one faith - - the candidate's - - is better than another.

Tell me about your tax plan, or foreign policy, or environmental program, but leave God out if your ads and brochures. Have some dignity.

I'm for the tolerance embedded in the 1st amendment as well as the healthy separation it establishes between worship and government action.

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