PS TO LAST POST

So I did not mean to denigrate anyone's spiritual path or beliefs in my last post, but I did mean to point out the hypocrisy of the Christian right, and the lack of transparency from Romney and his Mormon fellows about their religion and its practices.

There are obviously a lot of good people in all faiths who share common human values and live positive lives in many ways. But Catholics who stand by the church's decision not to ordain women as being based on the origins of Christianity are either ignorant of the true history or willfully lying to protect the power of a male hierarchy, etc.

And Muslims who murder young girls because they want an education or blow up innocent people to further their idea of what their religion stands for are obviously ignorant or blatantly lying about what their religion stands for in order to bring about some latter day leaders' distortion of the founding principles of their religion or outright lying to gain power etc.

And the same can be said for any religion, even Buddhism (plenty of Japanese Buddhist leaders either supported or didn't protest against their leaders massacres and atrocities leading up to and during World War Two etc.). But it is also true that many aspects of religions or their fundamentalist interpretations support lying as a way of protecting their power or projecting it into the world.

This is most true of Scientology which L. Ron Hubbard originally thought of as a way to make the world more like he thought it should be and made it a "religion" mostly for tax purposes, to avoid them, and stated categorically that lying to protect Scientology from its enemies or even just to get ahead as an individual was justified. This has also been true in Mormonism. Because, like many religions in their early phases, early Mormons were under attack (and their leader Joseph Smith assassinated, or martyred in their perspective) they accepted lying as a legitimate tactic for warding off inquiries and legal challenges etc.

The way Romney can turn on a dime and not, as say Robert F. Kennedy did, honestly express his decision to change his position on a policy etc. but instead act as if he never held the previous position even though it is fully documented in filmed speeches etc. comes directly out of the Mormon church's deliberate ignoring of past positions (most religions if not all do this as well) as if they never existed.

They did this with their rejection of polygamy and readjusted their image (and even name) to make it seem they were more Christian than they are (Muslims have many of the New testament stories about Jesus in their Koran, the Mormons don't, so if just having original Bibles stories in your holy book is a criterion for which religion is more Christian, the title would go to Islam!—or another way to look at it is in Islam there is only one God and Jesus is just one of His prophets, but Mohammad supersedes Jesus as prophet because he came later, whereas in Mormonism, Jesus is seen as a God, but one of many, including every Mormon man who righteously follows the tenets of their religion, etc.).

My spiritual practice gives me much solace and support and strength to face the struggles life presents, and I wouldn't deny anyone their own source of spiritual comfort and support. Nor would I deny that there are "good" people as well as "bad" ones in every religion and on every spiritual path. If you have the concept of "good and bad" well then everything and everyone contains both.

But I do feel that the secrecy in the Mormon religion and the history of lies, or maybe more accurately, ignoring or denying the truth (once the Mormon elders decided to change their anti-black policy and beliefs in I believe it was 1978 they spoke and wrote and behaved like there had never been an anti-black policy!) is a legitimate subject to bring up in speaking about Romney possibly being president because his own history of lying and mainly concern with only his fellow Mormons will be unprecedented in a president for our democratic society and system. I don't like that it isn't even being talked about in the media, a media that spent a lot of time in the last election talking about Obama's minister Jeremiah Wright and his affiliation with black liberation theology etc.