During Jay Leno’s usual pandering of Republican candidates, he asked Mitt Romney if, as president, he would practice diversity. Mitt’s reply: “Discrimination is wrong.”
He could have added, “Babies are precious” and “The sky is blue.”
Mitt is right. Discrimination is wrong. Now if only he believed it. As Massachusetts’ governor, his record has a few scratches on it. When it came to appointing women and minorities to judicial posts, the record skipped constantly.
To his credit, he did appoint a large number of minorities to state offices near the end of his term, but only after being hounded by the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts. Besides, he had made his intentions known to run for president and was ready to begin the usual flopping around.
As usual, it leads right back to everyone’s favorite topic: his LDS faith. Way back in 1978, God tapped the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ president–and prophet–Spencer W. Kimball on the shoulder and told him it was time to tidy up a few things. The church swept under the rug all the well-documented and racist dogma proclaiming blacks were an inferior race. Blacks could now be priests, serve on missions and be married in the temple.
Many not familiar with the faith like to think this is a contradiction–that an all-knowing God would just wake up one day and change his mind. Not so. It’s called “continuous revelation.” He doesn’t change his mind; he just keeps a few secrets to tell later.
To put it in simple terms, life is a puzzle and God is giving us a piece at a time.
Mitt could learn from his own faith–“continuous revelation” sure sounds better than “flip flopping”–though he should be prepared for the rest of us to put together a puzzle of our own: the connection between his personal decisions and those of the LDS Church.
In their defense, the leaders of the LDS Church have put together a good portfolio showing they are no longer racists. They have begun extensive genealogy of African-Americans, have widened missions in Africa and even have a few blacks in the Quorum of the Seventy.
The problem is, they refuse to apologize for their defense of the past. To do so would be admitting they were wrong, and goes against the whole philosophy of revelation.
Being unwilling to say, “I’m sorry” will be hard to explain to casual voters and the important minority ballots. Conservatism is inherent in the LDS Church and would no doubt raise suspicions about the level of diversity representation in the White House.
In a speech, Romney proclaimed that his faith would not be an issue in his governing. But the two are impossible to separate. In fact, he is looking more like a Provo resident every day. He proposes huge tax cuts and decreases in government spending, is pro-life to the absolute, opposes same-sex marriage and would without a doubt appoint as many conservatives to the Supreme Court as he possibly could.
Mitt Romney’s nomination seems like a long-shot, but with the pratfalls of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, it truly may all come down to faith.
In his case, there would be no separating church from state.
