America is Ready for a Mormon President

Today, while browsing the Yahoo home page looking for news to read, I came across this video essentially asking if America is ready for a Mormon president.

Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are both Mormons and are both seeking the Republican nomination in 2012 for the office of President of the United States. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, ran in 2008, while Huntsman is a former governor of Utah whose latest gig was in China as the Obama administration's ambassador to that country.

Personally, I don't know why the faith of these two public servants has to be an issue at all, and quite frankly, I'm getting tired of hearing about it.

If either one is elected to the office of President of the United States, he would be bound by the same solemn oath and duty to defend the Constitution of the United States as every president before him. Yet, many people seem to have this irrational fear that if either one is elected, he would somehow at best secure special treatment for his church by the federal government, and at worst hand the entire country over to his church, thus resulting in the forced conversions of us all.

That Romney's and Huntsman's faith is treated like such a controversial issue is reminiscent of what President John F. Kennedy endured on the campaign trail at the start of the 1960s. Many people feared that a Roman Catholic president would hand the entire country over to the Pope, an unreasonable fear that may still exist to some degree today, as Kennedy remains the only Catholic ever elected to the office.

Well, last time I checked, which was just a few minutes ago, Congress and the White House were still running the country, not the Vatican; the United States still embraced the concepts of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state; the United States was still the land of opportunity where anyone regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, or gender could make something of themselves; and the United States doesn't demand a so-called litmus test on religious faith for its president.