"No religious test" means you don't have to belong to a particular club in order to hold office or work in government. It doesn't mean people can't ask you about your membership in a religion, a golf club, a fraternal society, or any other outfit where people get together to be social or engage in group activities.

I support the DNC's decision to not use it as an issue. That's the high road and we are better off if the leadership, including Obama, stays away from it, imo.

OTOH, I think the press and super-pac's are going to see it as fair game and put him in some pretty awkward positions. He's tried to identify himself with the fundies and RW Catholics, but he is clearly neither one.

but he's a committed, prosyletizing believer, who went to considerable pains to facilitate his wife's conversion. Ultimately everyone in her family converted except her atheist father.

Thanks to LDS doctrine, he didn't have to. According to this and several other articles, Edward Davies, Romney's father-in-law, was posthumously baptized into Mormonism (yep, the LDS church recognizes such a thing). His father-in-law was anti-religious and likely never would've converted while he was alive--shame that Mittens apparently couldn't respect Davies' wishes and let him rest in peace.

Those who believe that the end of days is at hand may be more apt to push that nuclear button in an effort to bring it on. After all, they don't fear the apocalypse. They see all that as an organized plan from god, humanity be damned. Crazy fanatical thinking has no place in public office. IMO

To be more clear, you don't think they would actually start quoting scripture at AIPAC or some other shit like that?

...but doesn't say so, we have no right to ask him? I say bullshit.

As for crazy beliefs being held by candidates, my point is as follows:

A person who will allow their crazy beliefs to control what they do while in office is a person who will undoubtedly inject their crazy beliefs into the campaign. We have tons of examples of this.

Anything which might reasonably (or even unreasonably, in some cases) be expected to influence a candidate's behavior, actions or policies after they're elected is something that voters have a right to know about. Religion and religious beliefs absolutely qualify. You know this, just as you know that religious fundamentalists have a penchant for saying (or not saying) whatever will get them elected, and then charging ahead once they're entrenched.

Not all voters may care, but the ones that do should not be required to wait until AFTER a candidate is elected and is pursuing policies in furtherance of their religious beliefs to find out about them.

that if we expect to be able to investigate each and every candidate's religious beliefs during the campaign as a screening method, what is to stop atheists from being screened out of the political process completely?

This is exactly why we need to get through to as many people as possible that much more is required than simple religious reasoning in order to enact policy or law. It's also why we cannot continue play the game of countering the religious right with religious language. Complete separation should be more than law...it should be an ideal we all try to hold ourselves to.

But to go back to #10, do you really think that some crazy ass who is going to base their foreign or domestic policy on religious ideas won't bring that up in the campaign a la Rick Santorum?

That's just a silly belief spread by detractors. In Mormonism, women are ranked very high as the third most important sex, right after men and boys.

Ann Romney, for instance, at the moment of reawakening in heaven, doesn't act on her own. She awakens from her sleep only when a man calls to her. NOTE BENE: TRUE. But it doesn't have to be Mitt exclusively, it can be any close male relative. My friends, what could be fairer than that? What indeed?

In fact the only women who aren't treated fairly in heaven are the sad cases who haven't had children. They spend eternity pregnant. NOTE BENE: TRUE.

they show bigotry against other beliefs or none.

Otherwise, it should be irrelevant. Attacking Romney JUST for being a Mormon, and challenging him about his beliefs, is a bit too much like the 'secret Muslim' attacks on Obama.

Romney should not be rejected for being a Mormon; but he should be rejected for being a moron!