There are many, many reasons to have low regard for Mitt Romney.
All but the totally delusional correctly see him as disingenuous, dishonest,
devious, and devoid of an authentic set of core beliefs. He is a shill for
corporate and rich elites. He is the phony smiling, perfect hair poster jerk
for the proverbial one percent. But I now clearly see that there is another,
more important reason to feel like vomiting at the thought of President Romney.
As almost everyone knows by now, Romney has been a senior,
influential member of the Mormon Church, which has been roundly criticized for
being an inauthentic Christian religion and for various beliefs and practices
made comical in the hugely successful Broadway show The Book of Mormon. But
there is one particular Mormon practice that is so upsetting to most people who
learn about it that deserves to become an issue in this presidential campaign.
I want Mitt Romney to stand up and have the courage and decency to
proclaim to Americans exactly whether he personally supports the Mormon
practice known as proxy baptism. If you are not a member of the Mormon faith,
then you should take this very seriously. Proxy baptism is like email spam,
junk mail and unwanted marketing phone calls that invade our lives, destroy our
privacy, waste our time and make our blood boil. Actually, proxy baptism is a
zillion times worse. It represents the invasion of one religion against all
others and atheism also.
In a nutshell, proxy baptism refers to the Mormon practice of
baptizing a living person on behalf of someone who is dead and was not a member
of the Mormon Church. The goal is to get that non-Mormon person into
Mormon-defined heaven, which is totally different than what all other religions
think of as heaven. The dead person nor anyone related to the dead person does
not necessarily give permission or express any desire to be so baptized.
Standing in for dead people are young Mormon men and women dressed
in white robes in Mormon temple ceremonies worldwide, which is considered an
honor for them.
Over time many people who are not Mormons have mounted attacks on
this practice, viewing the Mormon practice as a serious invasion of their lives
and beliefs. Someone who has received considerable attention as such a critic
is Nobel-laureate Holocaust survivor Elie
Wiesel and a top official from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He has focused
on posthumously baptizing Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Despite his attempts
to stop Mormons doing this and despite promises they would, the practice has
continued.
I think it totally reasonable for everyone to demand that Romney
take a public position on this Mormon practice. Specifically, I want Romney to
declare in clear, unambiguous language whether he has participated in such
proxy baptisms, whether he believes that this practice is appropriate, and
whether or not he understands why non-Mormons would object to this practice.
Should Americans resent a US President that supports Mormon proxy
baptizing? Absolutely.
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