Posted on 10/25/2009 12:22:00 PM PDT by Colofornian
Washington » Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid keeps a copy of the Book of Mormon in his office just off the chamber floor. There's a second copy handy to give away to someone in need of spiritual guidance.
"I've had more than that," says the Nevada Democrat, pulling the extra edition from his desk drawer. "I have one left."
The Temple-recommend-carrying Reid is very active in his church, say fellow members in the Washington area. But that may come as a shock to some Mormon critics who contend that the Senate leader's political stands put him at odds with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The latest round of religiously charged criticism came after Reid told gay rights groups in a private meeting that the LDS Church's efforts to back the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California was a waste of resources and hurt the faith's missionary efforts.
Utah Republican Party Chairman Dave Hansen posted a news story on that subject on his Facebook page, prompting several conservatives to challenged Reid's Mormon credentials.
"I have always wondered why he is even a church member," wrote a Utah Mormon, who declined an interview request. "Doesn't speaking out against the church result in excommunication?"
Other e-mails, blog posts and complaints poured in.
Conservative activist and Utah blogger Holly Richardson said she found Reid's comments disconcerting and doesn't see how Reid's far left political beliefs can align with the LDS Church.
"I just don't get how his politics translate to somebody who has LDS beliefs," Richardson says. "He's an embarrassment to me as a Mormon."
Reid, who in 2007 became the highest ranking elected Mormon in the church's history, says he's faced this for years. And he's not offended.
"I think some of the most unChristian-like letters, phone calls, contacts I've had were from members of the [LDS] church, saying some of the most mean things that are not in the realm of our church doctrine or certainly Christianity," Reid said last week during an interview in his office.
Reid converted to Mormonism his senior year in college and attends church just outside the District of Columbia when in Washington or in Boulder City when in Nevada.
He recalls a time when his grandchildren were trick-or-treating at a local LDS ward event and came upon a poster featuring a picture of the Devil and Reid, and asking "Can you tell the difference?"
"I remember it," Reid says when asked how he deals with the criticism, "but I try not to let people who do not represent the teachings that I have learned interfere with my basic beliefs."
Religion and politics » Reid isn't the first and likely not the last political leader to face fire for personal religious beliefs.
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on the Vatican earlier this year, an anti-abortion Catholic group hand delivered a letter calling for her to be ousted from the faith for her pro-abortion rights stand. A few Catholic bishops said during the 2004 presidential campaign that they would refuse Democratic Sen. John Kerry communion for his position on abortion.
Questions were raised during John F. Kennedy's bid for the presidency about whether Rome would call the shots because of his Catholic faith and similar questions arose with Mitt Romney, a Mormon, during his White House bid last year.
"Having Mormons criticize Harry Reid, Catholics criticize Nancy Pelosi -- George W. Bush got criticism from Methodists -- it's not an uncommon experience at all," says John Green, senior researcher at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
"There are disputes within almost every religious community about what it means to be a strong supporter of the faith. What is it to be a good member?" Green continues. And because much of that dispute deals with controversial subjects, it spills over to politics.
"It is a very tough spot that Sen. Reid is in," Green says. "It ought to be tough enough to represent Nevada [and be majority leader] without the religion angle and the religion angle just makes that much tougher."
Washington lobbyist William Nixon, who is also the church's Arlington Stake president, says Reid is in politics' most precarious position.
"Serving as a majority leader in either party is always difficult for politicians," says Nixon, a Republican. "You need to be the spear carrier for your party even on issues that are in the extremities and that often is at odds with what's good politics at home or even how you may worship personally."
The LDS Church declined comment for this story but pointed to its statement on relationships with government.
It says that elected officials who are LDS make their own decisions "and may not necessarily be in agreement with one another or even with a publicly stated church position."
And the church has made efforts in the past to dispel the notion that it sides with conservative politics. In 1998, church General Authority Marlin Jensen stressed that good Mormons can also be good Democrats. The late James E. Faust, a Democrat and then a member of the First Presidency, the church's top governing body, said it was in the church's best interest to have a two-party system.
Still, Mormon faithful remain overwhelmingly conservative. A survey released in July by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life showed that 65 percent of Mormons aligned themselves with the Republican Party or leaned that way, while 22 percent sided with the Democratic Party.
There are 14 members of the LDS Church in Congress, most of them Republicans.
But even some of the well-known Republican elected Mormons defend Reid as a faithful church member.
"He has the right to voice his opinions but I would under no circumstances challenge Harry's credentials as a member of the church," says Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.
Bennett's Utah Senate colleague, Orrin Hatch, says it's not fair for fellow Mormons to disparage Reid as anything but a devout Mormon. Hatch says he didn't agree with Reid's statement on the gay marriage ballot question but said he's entitled to speak it.
"I can personally tell you that Harry is a good member of the LDS faith and he was expressing a personal opinion that his side feels very deeply about," Hatch says.
Reid says church leaders have never complained about his political statements.
Reid's calling » Shortly after being elected in 1986, church leaders summoned Reid to their Salt Lake City headquarters.
"It was a pretty short meeting," Reid says. "They said, here's your assignment: Be the best member of the church you can be. That was it."
Even on the most recent issue of gay marriage, Reid says he doesn't disagree with the church's position on traditional marriage. The senator says he voted in Nevada for the state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
But he says he's expressed his concern for years to leaders about the church stepping into the debate and that the millions the church invested in the Prop 8 campaign was bad strategy.
Reid said he's not suggesting the church change its position, just that it not speak out so strongly. "It's just bad strategy to create so much ill-will in California."
The Democrat, though, says he understands the backlash he gets over such statements. He notes that most of the church's lay ecclesiastic leaders are conservative and he's fine with that.
"I don't think my faith is a hindrance to what I do and I'm sorry if people feel that I in some way embarrass them," Reid says, "but I have to frankly say that even on this issue there are a lot of people that say 'we agree with you.'"
Today, Reid, with his security escort in tow, likely will be making his home teaching rounds after his ward's three-hour service. Anyone who questions his Mormon credentials should see that, says Jim Vlock, his home-teaching companion.
"He's got a tremendous burden with health care [reform] right now but despite that he finds time for home teaching," says Vlock.
Amen. Speaking as a Mormon about Mormons. Most Mormons I know are adamantly Pro-Life. Where they screw up is that they do not realize there is a differrence between helping and compelling others to help.
Much will come out about Harry. Mormons should back away before the deluge.
If you are trying to imply that BYU is a hotbed of liberalism, with all due respect that could be the silliest thing I’ve seen all year.
No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying they lack the discernment because they engage in identity socio-politics FIRST, and everything else is a distant SECOND...
Example 1: I've seen 5 FR thread/posts re financial scam Mormons taking advantage of fellow ward Mormons this yr alone -- ponzi schemes -- two in the last 2 wks...why? 'cause they trust the Mormon ID FIRST, and fall for the rest of the scams they offer up...
Example 2: Likewise, some of the BYU faithful were trusting Reid FIRST because of the Lds ID...
Example 3: Just like Lds trusted Smith on his liberal position on marriage (more than one wife) -- even though their good books (Bible & Book of Mormon) told them otherwise...they trusted the ID of Smith FIRST...and foreclosed on what their good books told them about marriage
Great point on how some LDS members seemed to get so easily deceived!
Mormons set these examples like low-hanging fruit...Mitt Romney is another perfect example...he was pro-abortion thruout the 90s...wrote a letter to the editor of Utah newspaper telling folks he didn't consider himself "pro-choice...then campaigned heavily as pro-abortion as Mass gov...then supposedly "converted" to pro-life, only then to tell folks several years into his gubernatorial pos. that he wasn't going to rile up "the status-quo" pos. on abortion in that state! And then appointed a Planned Parenthood rep to help permanently oversee RomneyCare in that state...yet supposedly 95% of "pro-life" Mormons voted for him in Utah, Wyoming, AZ & Nevada! (go figure)
Likewise Romney took 3 separate stances on whether hiring homosexuals should be a civil rights issue -- all while being a long-time board member for Marriott of the porn industry -- run by a Mormon hierarchy religious figure whose padded his pockets with porn prostitutes! (No better than a twice-removed pimp) Yet "anti-porn" Mormons look past the Romney pro-homosexual positions he for the Log Cabin Republicans in the Bay State and the above -- and they look past the porn revenue of Bill Marriott. Why? ('Cause they're Mormon...Identity socio-politics!)
The assumption is always that Romney only pretended to move to the right for the presidential election. Isn’t it equally plausible that Romney moved to the left during the governor race and as governor in order to have a chance in Massachusetts?
Ah, excellent diagnostician on Mitt's "symptoms" but a wrong core conclusion. Comments I've heard from other posters who give Mitt the "benefit of the doubt" seem to assume Mitt was somewhat of a middle moderate who...
...shifted left in the early 90s,
...shifted left again in '02,
...then shifted right midway thru gubernatorial position,
...then left again for appeasing RomneyCare pushers,
...and then back to the right for POTUSville.
My observation is that Mitt has no "center" of who he even is @ his core. Few core convictions & accompanying "identity" (other than "Mormon" and the Romney political name). If you have no true lasting "center," that's a vacous place to be -- willing to "sell your soul" to the political process of appeasement.
This observation is best anchored in Romney's 8/12/07 Fox interview with Chris Wallace: Romney: "I never called myself pro-choice.
I never allowed myself to use the word pro-choice because I didn't FEEL I was pro-choice.
I would protect the law, I said, as it was, but I wasn't pro-choice, and so..."
That amounts to whatever he was from…
…1970 when his mom ran as a pro-abortion senator & he sided with her,
…to the early 90s when he attended a Planned Parenthood fundraiser (& his wife wrote a check to Planned Parenthood in trying to “outflank” pro-abortion opposing candidate Ted Kennedy)…
…to 2002 when he solicited a third pro-abortion voters guide after filling out two other pro-abortion guides…
…up until 5/27/05 – when he promised he would CONTINUE to protect the “status quo” of abortion in a press conference -- w/whatever “interruption” he had due to a pro-life altar call in Nov of '04, whatever that was...well, he assured us in August 2007 campaign mode that it wasn't a pro-abortion inlook or outlook 'cause he didn't ”feel...pro-choice..."
Now is this just “Mormon talk” for basing reality upon some sentimental burning bosom – how you “feel” = reality? (Or does reality transcend that & includes how you talk & act & trust?) Would the pre-born babies aborted now say in heaven, “Yes, Mitt was our man because he never ‘called’ himself pro-choice and never 'felt' like it?")
Believe me, when a politician claims he is not pro-abortion or pro-choice while saying, “I would protect the [abortion] laws,” how is that distinct from WWII German politicians in the various death camps regions claiming that “all” they were doing was upholding German laws?
A politician who actually takes the time to write a letter-to-the-editor of a Utah newspaper in 2001 – like Romney did – to claim that he “wasn’t pro-choice” – and then in 2002 campaigns on abortion and goes out of his way to even expand pro-abortion voter guide awareness has no moral core center of protecting life. And when his…
… 2001 position opposes his 1992 position.
…And when his 2002 position opposes his 2001 position.
…And when his Nov. 2004 position opposes his 2002 position.
…And when his May 27, 2005-2006 position opposes his November 2004 position.
…And when his most-of-2007 campaign position opposes his mid-2005, etc. position.
…And when his Dec 2007 Katie Couric interview opposes his previous 2007 pro-life statements…
…you have a politician whose core is ultimate flexible rubber.
Those kind of convictions bounce like a bad check.
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