As a religious minority (I am an atheist - Spider Grandmotherist. I do my best to live by the two rules given tp the Hopi Indians by their Spider Grandmother: "Don't go around hurting folks. Try to learn about things.") I am sick of political candidates pandering to religious testing by fundamentalist preachers posturing in their megachurchs like modern day Elmer Gantrys and mainly questioning the candidates beliefs about Jesus, abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage and euthanasia.
Come to think of it, I think there used to be something in our U.S. Constitution banning this, but I suppose after almost 8 years of the Bush II presidency, and a majority of Democratic cowards and Republican crooks in our Congress and a criminal majority in the SCOTUS, that, like so many things in our constitution, the ban on religious testing no longer applies.
Why is it that presidential candidates feel compelled to submit to questioning by Xtain religious fundamentalists with limited social agendas, who represent only a minority of American religious opinion? The supposed "morals" and ethics of these religious poseurs adhere little to morals and ethics of the majority of thoughtful religious persons in this country. Why are the Presidential candidates, if they feel compelled to answer religious questions at all, not answering to a panel of religious leaders - Christians of many opinions rather than monolithic Xtian fundis, and Jewish, Muslim, and Catholics expressing the variety religious morals and ethics that exist in these faiths and in this country? Why have political candidates for many offices thought they had to answer to these folks who assume they KNOW exactly God's opinions on these questions, and that God's opinions coincide exactly with their own?
I don't know about the rest of America, but I am sickened when I see the men and women who will be chosen as the leaders of our cities, states and this country, forced to answer questions on national television from people who have demonstrated again and again that the leaders they have chosen to back are incompetents, criminals or warmongers and whoremongers.
And the American media continues to let them get away with it. Perhaps all was not right with the world in the days of FDR, HST, JFK, in the days of my youth and young adulthood, but in those days, America was not run by religious fools, and cowards and thieves as has been the case under the last three Republican Presidents.