Anti-Mormon Democrats?
Now, here’s an interesting internal in the new Newsweek Iowa poll.
Much has been made in the media of the unwillingness of “Conservative Christians” to support Mitt Romney, due to his Mormon beliefs. But how many Republicans, and how many Democrats, indicated that they would NOT vote for an otherwise qualified Mormon for President?
Republicans: 21%
Democrats: 27%
And, on perhaps the more indicative question, “Do you think America is ready for a Mormon President,” here are the negatives:
Republicans: 35%
Democrats: 51%
I won’t hesitate to say it: the argument that a person’s beliefs in the Church of Latter Day Saints disqualifies them from public office is bigotry. Nothing else but. And, at least in one state and with regard to this one faith, there seem to be more bigots among Democrats than Republicans.
This is misleading. Republicans don’t like Mormonism because it’s not Christian enough. Democrats don’t like Mormonism because it’s too Christian.
Comment by weltschmerz — 9/30/2007 @ 2:30 am
Would it still be bigotry if you felt that a person of a given faith would feel themselves beholden to behave according to the dictates of some other person, even over their best judgment as to the proper execution of their duties?
I’m not at all saying that this is the case with Romney, but it’s my impression that that was the objection raised by some to the idea of a Catholic president. I seriously doubt that it’s an issue with Romney; most of the candidates have indicated a strong presence of faith in their lives, and I see no reason why Mormonism would be any worse than any other. However, if one really did feel that a candidate’s judgment was compromised by faith in the way I described above, would it be bigotry to refuse to vote for them on those grounds alone?
Comment by Talarohk — 9/30/2007 @ 4:35 am
If one were to think that a person’s belief in a given faith intrinsically meant that they’d be beholden to interests outside of their own judgment, that’d be bigotry, yes.
Remember that the people responding to this survey aren’t saying anything specific about Romney; they’re saying that they wouldn’t vote for any Mormon. The implication is that the faith intrinsically, and invariably, carries some form of baggage that renders its practitioners unfit for public service. Which is a load of crap. Romney has spoken very directly to the issue, and there is nothing whatsoever in his record that would suggest that he’s in the pocket of the LDS leadership, policy-wise.
Comment by Rojas — 9/30/2007 @ 11:09 am
A lot of Christians (and non-Christians) think that mormonism is crazy, a cult and unChristian. That’s bound to affect how they see any mormon.
As for the difference between Democrats and Republicans on what they’d do themselves, the difference is rather small to be making a decision about which side has more ‘bigots’ (although I’m not sure that it’s bigotry, myself — if it wasn’t important, candidates wouldn’t be making a big deal about their own christianity and beliefs, would they?). I am surprised that the numbers are so small, although I guess that “wouldn’t vote for”, which is pretty strong — I bet that many more would hold it against a candidate.
Comment by Adam — 9/30/2007 @ 11:18 am
Finally, whether or not people think that the country is ‘ready for a mormon president’ doesn’t indicate bigotry, it’s an assessment of how they believe that they fellow Americans feel. I personally doubt that America is “ready for a mormon president”, too.
Comment by Adam — 9/30/2007 @ 11:25 am
Bigot!
Comment by Rojas — 9/30/2007 @ 11:27 am
Ignorance. Pure ignorance. It amazes me that people will base decisions on their beliefs about a religion that I would bet most of them know little to nothing about.
That being said, I’m sure the same response would be given if it was a Hindu, Buddhist, or any other religion that wasn’t in the mainstream Christian variety.
If a person’s voting record was an indication of them sticking too close to their religion, I would understand the bigotry or slant against them. With Mitt, this simply isn’t the case.
Comment by Cruise — 9/30/2007 @ 7:15 pm
To be fair, Mitt has tried to play up his christian socon credentials (which he didn’t do when he was running in MA politics). It seems to me that he’s trying to make the case that his faith has sort of brought him around on issues on which he formerly rode to the Left (gay marriage, abortion, whathaveyou). In any case, he’s surely invited some of it upon himself, although it was bound to come up in any case — it’s just a bigger deal with him running to the social right of the party.
If it’s any consolation, as I linked before, an atheist or a homosexual is far worse off, regarding electability, than a mormon. Way more ‘bigotry’ or ‘ignorance’ or whathaveyou when it comes to them.
Comment by Adam — 9/30/2007 @ 8:18 pm
Rojas, your analysis strikes me as quite misleading. Three points:
1) There is only one Mormon candidate running for president, and he is a republican. Don’t you think that might effect the poll bias? What percentage of those polled were either ignorant of Mitt Romney’’s campaign or were able to completely blot it from their mind while answering? You later stated “Remember that the people responding to this survey aren’t saying anything specific about Romney; they’re saying that they wouldn’t vote for any Mormon.” Nonsense. You ask too much of the human psyche.
2) As Adam said in #5, the first question is actually more indicative of actual bigotry amongst those polled, the second question asks the pollee to assess national bigotry. That there is only a six point difference between likely Rep and Dem voters is pretty surprising, and also within the margin of error.
3) You wrote: “And, at least in one state and with regard to this one faith, there seem to be more bigots among Democrats than Republicans.” Since you are assigning blanket relative values of bigotry, what then are we to make of the results from number 9, which is the same question but for a woman candidate. By your logic the poll results reveal significantly more bigotry amongst the Republicans, 18% more to be precise, that’s three times the gap for the Mormon question.
Comment by Misanthrope — 10/1/2007 @ 7:38 pm
I agree with Misanthrope. The difference here, which is small, can easily be chalked up to the fact that the one Mormon in the race, i.e. what everybody (correctly) assumes is the specific context of the question (context in the sense that though the question itself deigns to be a general statement, the reason they’re polling it at all, right now, is because of Mitt Romney; humans don’t respond to poll questions like robots, the context is present).
I also think Clay is probably right, though this buttresses rather than contradicts your point (but it is a shade of difference), that to some extent higher proportions of Democrats saying they wouldn’t vote for a candidate of evangelical Christian sect X may have less to do with inherent bigotry against that sect, and more to do with latent knee-jerkiness when it comes to generic “Christian” candidates of any sect. One could read that a couple of ways; that being that what’s reflected here is less anti-Mormon bigotry and more anti-Christian bigotry generally (that’s the reading that buttresses Rojas), or just that “Christian” candidates, in general, have given many people a long track record of being not the most liberal of folks, so if ALL you know about a candidate is his Christian sect, that’s probably a very important aspect of that candidate, which means that person is probably much more likely to be a Republican. Indeed, Mormons SPECIFICALLY are much, much, much more likely to be Republicans than even, say, Baptists. So, if you’re a liberal and you don’t know anything about a candidate (not even Party ID), just that he’s a Mormon—well, there’s a certain amount of sense to saying “Uh uh, no deal”. I would guess if you saw a lot more liberal Democratic Mormons, that percentage would drop significantly.
And, indeed, that’s sort of an interesting facet to the Republican thing. One would EXPECT them to not disqualify a political candidate on the grounds of Mormonism, because that’s such a reliable predictor of Republicanism. One can find all sorts of reasons BESIDES bigotry why liberals might have a segment that would answer a certain way to that question. I can think of less reasons besides bigotry why Republicans would.
Comment by Brad — 10/1/2007 @ 11:24 pm
Finally, this will get me in trouble, but you and I Rojas have an old friend whom both of us greatly respect that recently said to me “Well, maybe I’m a bigot for being inclined to not vote for a Mormon, but…well, I’m less inclined”. I’m not sure how far you have to go for something to cease being bigotry and start being a tad rational. If you found out a candidate believed he had been abducted by aliens, would it be bigotry to be less inclined to vote for him? What about voodooism? What about Scientology? Is there ANYTHING that one could classify as a religion in either an intellectual or political way that you can think ill of without being a bigot?
I’m not saying Mormonism is akin to any of those, just that for the sake of something being a religion does not mean that any less-opinion of followers of that religion is automatically bigotry. When I did that reading on Mormonism this summer, I of course WANT, in some PC way, to react with “My, how interesting that these people have such a vibrant culture and colorful history. That strikes me as akin and qualitatively equal to all other major world religions.” But, it was pretty hard to quell that “Man, what the fuck? That’s just NUTTY.” reflex. I’m not entirely sure that said reflex is just an innate bigotry on my part, though I’m willing to at least entertain the possibility.
Of course, the atheists have an argument here, as do outsiders defending Mormonism against bigotry, that it IS nutty, but no more so than any other major world religion, that the only reason I have that nutty-considering reflex is because the other major world religions are so ancient and ingrained in the culture that they seem as givens, whereas Mormonism, which was founded after the invention of the printing press, very recently, and which has ample documentary evidence surrounding it (as well as stories and mythologies much closer to our cultural realities), only seems strange in comparison because of that. That if Christianity were founded in the 19th century, and Mormonism in the 1st, our cultural inclinations would be reversed. I think that could well be the case, but that kind of thinking leads one to the conclusion not that all religions should be respected, but that all religions are equally nutty.
And, as an aside, the people adhering to that latter kind of philosophy, I would just hazard to guess, are much more likely to identify as Democrats.
Comment by Brad — 10/1/2007 @ 11:33 pm
So: there are good reasons and bad reasons for thinking all Mormons are unfit for public office, and it’s OK for Democrats to feel that way, and to express it in public polling, because they feel that way for the right reasons?
Am I getting this right?
Comment by Rojas — 10/1/2007 @ 11:54 pm
Not exactly, but something close to that. I gave my offhand take trying to describe my thinking behind that. You would have more of a case if we could extract from that poll all historic, political, and personal context from the answer, and if people just said “being Mormon should be a disqualifier for public office”, but we can’t, and they didn’t. In any case, the contexts are, I think, more than enough to justify a 6% difference there. And, by and large, they’d be particular to Democrats (i.e. I can’t make the same excuses for the Republicans, or at least not to the same degree).
I know you disagree: explain why. Just saying “bigotry” again doesn’t count.
Comment by Brad — 10/2/2007 @ 1:10 am
“So: there are good reasons and bad reasons for thinking all Mormons are unfit for public office, and it’s OK for Democrats to feel that way, and to express it in public polling, because they feel that way for the right reasons?”
I know you are being humorous, but do I detect an “I really believe this” undercurrent in your statement? If so, let me adjust it, in the context of your original analysis:
So: there are good reasons and bad reasons for completely misinterpreting this poll so as to assign blanket bigotry at higher levels for the Dems vice Reps. There are good reasons and bad reasons for ignoring the national context (Romney), the margin of error, and the even greater partisan bigotry revealed in the answer to other questions (woman candidate.)
Really now, you continue to harp on the Democrats and their supposed bigotry. Do you really think the 6% difference (if even statistically significant) is not because of the context of a Mitt Romney candidacy?
Or am I just Left Behind in this discussion, and we are souly focusing on the justification/ rationalization for a priori elimination of Mormons from the list of acceptable candidates list?
Comment by Misanthrope — 10/2/2007 @ 8:55 am
I think if you look back at the original post, you’ll find that this is a refutation of the sentiment that Republicans are unwilling to elect Mormon candidates. I think the data adequately justify that it’s not an exclusively Republican problem.
The argument that this is a hidden referendum on Romney himself is not a persuasive one to me. Imagine that the question were about African-Americans, and 27% of Republicans were to indicate that they’d never vote for a black person under any circumstances. Would people be portraying that as meaningless due to the fact that Obama was in the race? Or would they be rejecting it as an unjustifiably expression of bigotry? I view this in the same terms.
I don’t buy into the idea that “these beliefs are silly” is somehow an acceptable justification for rejection of an entire category of people from public office. If it impacted upon their behavior in office, that would be one thing, but there’s a whole lot of LDS officeholders and not one of them has taken time off from work to go digging for golden tablets. I view this through the same lens as a statement that “all Presbyterians are unsuitable for public office”. Or, as Adam points out, “all atheists.”
Categorical statements of this kind are, by definition, bigoted. They assume that all people in a given category are the same. This is exactly the sort of divisive thinking that we ought to repudiate at every opportunity.
Comment by Rojas — 10/2/2007 @ 11:59 am
I will go on record as saying that I almost certainly wouldn’t vote for a scientologist, although I can see situations where I might.
I bet that scientologists are even more unpopular than atheists, in politics (although they seem to earn enough money making movies).
Comment by Adam — 10/2/2007 @ 12:26 pm
Rojas, I am inclined to agree with your statements in comment 15, largely because I think you have walked back from your originally stated differentiation between the parties. I will accept that some significant portion of the “I won’t vote for a Mormon” respondees are motivated by bigotry that is not specifically associated with Romney (but this applies to respondees from BOTH parties). I stand by the assessment that the 6% difference in the poll is not statistically useful given the Romney context.
And I have to side with you on the assessment of this as bigotry, plain and simple. I can’t endorse this sort of blanket rejection, even if we were talking about scientologists, a group I find to be far more willfully ignorant and delusional than the Mormons. In the way of blanket statements, I am much more comfortable saying:
The more fundamentalists, evangelical, or recently invented your religion, the less likely I am to vote for you.
I am comfortable with this because the more fundamentalist, evangelical, or recently invented your religion, the more likely you are to reject basic historical, scientific, or rational concepts that directly influence your view of legislation, to include evolution-creatinism in schools, civil liberties for gays, establishment clause of the first ammendment, foreign policy decisions relating to Israel and Armegeddon, etc etc ad nauseum.
Comment by Misanthrope — 10/2/2007 @ 2:17 pm
When people say that they “won’t vote for…” I tend to read it as a statement of probabilities and as a proxy for “there is only a very small probability that I’d vote for…”. I mean, the question is rather silly in any case, because a big aspect of voting regards the other available choices. A logical question would be about whether mormonism, or scientology, or atheism, are negative or positive factors. Asking whether you’d just not vote for someone of that description will, I think, push some people into agreeing even when they would really prefer a more sophisticated statement.
In any case, candidates who make their religiosity a big deal (I think that Romney has done that) are doing that because they think that it’ll have an effect. In particular, the group that Romney’s courting want to vote for a christian and Romney’s taking pains to reassure them that he is one (although there are some christian churches that just don’t agree with that). If it should also have a negative effect, well, no big surprise; most political plays are double-edged.
Comment by Adam — 10/2/2007 @ 2:37 pm
I don’t think that’s really true at all, is it? Judaism is the oldest major world religion, and it’s pretty liberal when it comes to how people vote on abortion, civil liberties, and the like.
Christianity (Catholicism specifically) is among the most conservative when it comes to how it relates to the civic realm, and it’s pretty old (more conservative, perhaps, is Islam, which is a bit younger). When you break Christianity into sects, I’m not sure how that breaks down, but I’d be surprised if the more recent the spin-off, the more illiberal the resulting clan.
I suppose the larger point is, at what point are you allowed to consider a person’s deeply held beliefs, even if not directly relevant to the position, and judge them, qualitatively, as one indicator of a person’s judgment, or culture? Does tax exempt status equate to a blanket shield against rational critique? I DON’T, I suppose, view race and religion as identical. Nor do I think this is entirely true: “If it impacted upon their behavior in office, that would be one thing, but there’s a whole lot of LDS officeholders and not one of them has taken time off from work to go digging for golden tablets.”. Well, there has also been a long, long history of problems with LDS officeholders, namely that there are a lot of historic and systemic examples of them viewing LDS concerns as above constitutional ones. The church itself has gotten much, much better about this since the early 20th century, and in terms of mainstream LDS in contemporary America, I’d generally agree with you, but of course a huge part of Mormon history involves essentially revolt against the entire United States political system, either in terms of civil disobedience (“bleeding the beast”, i.e. an explicit instruction to soak, through fraud, the US government at every opportunity), pro-LDS negligence (Sheriffs in LDS towns protecting their own, that sort of thing on all kinds of levels), even armed insurrection, bounties on government agents and elected officials, yadda yadda yadda. In fact, their prophet, Joseph Smith, had many divine revelations, considered holy, officially, by the LDS, that were SPECIFIC TO GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, and that were not exactly conducive to liberal democratic principles as most mainstream Americans understand it. He specifically envisioned, and again this is church doctrine, what he called Theodemocracy, essentially a US-style theocracy. His third prophecy related to the overthrow of the US government, his fourth relates to the dissolution of Congress, etc. It is not a religion without an explicitly political component, a component that we can relate to our system of government because it was directly in conversation with it, and that political component is one that I don’t think we should be afraid to make qualitative judgments on because people consider the guy from whom it came to be a prophet.
Now, all that said, the LDS church has moved far away, at least in official line, from much of that (though it is still scripture, the word of God as told to Joseph Smith, and the LDS has been very, very clear over its history that where the Word of God and the Word of The Constitution conflict, God wins every time), and their followers, in practice, have also. And, like you, my experience with Mormons has, by a huge margin, been very positive. I, personally, would obviously not refuse to consider a guy based solely on the fact that he were a Mormon. However, that does not follow that any qualitative judgments on the religion or its followers are bigotry, unless you’re willing to also give up your equation of fundamental Islam as “evil” as of the same stripe. One is allowed to have opinions, after all, and it being about a religious matter does not make it ipso facto beyond the pale.
Comment by Brad — 10/2/2007 @ 2:40 pm
It seems that bigotry is really serious when it is about areas over which that person has no control or choice, such as ethnic background. Being a catholic, or mormon or atheist isn’t like that; even though you can be brought up in a faith and, therefore, more likely to follow it, that still doesn’t put it in the same ballpark as, for example, your ancestry or sex.
Comment by Adam — 10/2/2007 @ 2:46 pm
I’m really getting tired of hearing from Hewitt and others how if one votes against Romney simply because he’s LDS, then that person is a “bigot.” Similarly, I’m also tired of hearing, “We are not electing a pastor-in-chief, but a commander-in-chief.”
First, suppose there is another candidate H who holds roughly identical moral and political values with R. Both are roughly identical in terms of experience and integrity, but H differs from R in that the former holds to the majority’s theological values. Under such a scenario, it does not seem that one is a bigot if he or she votes for H on the basis of shared theological values.
Second, suppose there’s a dear sweet grandma who doesn’t follow politics much. She could never hold her own politically with the likes of Hewitt. Yet she loves the Lord, and wants someone in office who will not only be an individual of integrity (not necessarily a pastor, although that would be nice), but someone who will trust her Lord to lead this nation. She holds this on the basis of good reasons, not on the basis of mere preference. This is a value she does not share with Mormons, since she knows that Mormons follow an idolatrous, blasphemous, and imaginary god. For her, this value is fundamental for all other values. Thus, she refuses to vote for Romney. There is no hatred on her part toward Romney or others who are not of her faith. She would rather have someone in office, who is not simply a “person of faith,” but a “person of the Christian faith.”
Does that entail that she’s a bigot? For someone to claim that it does, then it seems just as fair to call that individual a bigot against God-fearing folk who want their leaders to follow and trust the same God they do. Hewitt, et.al need to be more careful when throwing the “bigot” card out. If it merely means an “intolerant individual,” then obviously what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander as it were, and Hewitt, et.al are bigots themselves.
But who wants to be known as a “bigot” anyway? The real problem here is that this term is smuggling in modern notions of “intolerance.” As such, the terms mean wrongly being against something when everything should be accepted (except of course those who are against something the other group does not like). This is strictly applied to religious beliefs, which are automatically ruled out from political discussion. What matters here is if all the other values are the same. Thus, in the political realm, all religious views are equally acceptable. Of course on the other hand, traditional notions of “intolerance” are acceptable when these other non-religious values are not the same. Here the term means rightly being against something and not everything can or should be accepted. So as a result of this language, Hewitt, et.al have created a radical ad hoc separation between religion and politics.
The “separation of church and state” is something entirely different. It simply means that the state cannot play favorites politically and establish a state-run Church. The state must also not inhibit the free exercise of religion by individuals in or out of the government.
What Hewitt, et.al are claiming is that one’s religious beliefs should have no bearing as a criterion for deciding who should be voted into office. So long as the candidate shares our other (conservative) values, then what God is worshipped is irrelevant. But on my view, it is insufficient to scare people into this Hewitt position by playing the “bigot” card. Some things rightly deserve intolerance, and being intolerant of voting someone in office with a false god seems at least prima facie like one of those things.
http://www.MormonInfo.org
Comment by MormonInfo.org — 12/14/2007 @ 8:14 pm
I have no problem with you posting that here, although I’ll just point out that you already posted it at your own site (bottom of the page here), but that’s just by way of informing the other readers; there’s not anything untoward in it, because you link your own (mormon-unfriendly) site in your name anyhow.
I’m not supporting your coyly-name candidate ‘H’ either, but I do think that if Romney wins the nomination and there is more publicity given to what mormon belief entails, he’s going to be dead in the water. On the other hand, I think that Huckabee will get steamrollered, too. My reasons for believing that it’s OK for readers to look at the beliefs of the candidates are rather more widely-drawn than yours (which I confess, I don’t entirely follow, particularly your discussion of ‘bigotry’), I would also add.
Comment by Adam — 12/14/2007 @ 8:32 pm