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“We need men and women of integrity and constancy, not those of expediency and inconsistency” December 2007 Jeffrey Nielsen, an author and instructor at Westminster College and Utah Valley State College, wrote an editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune criticizing a recent speech by presidential hopeful and fellow Mormon Mitt Romney. Romney was expected to deliver a speech in which he would avow that if he were to become president he would not take orders from Salt Lake City. Instead, Romney blasted what he called “the religion of secularism in America” in a speech was calculated to please conservative Christian voters who are uneasy about Romney’s religion. “[Romney’s] speech, though a masterful political performance, won't help him win the Republican nomination,” writes Nielsen. “He seems to have decided his only hope of winning is to appeal to the religious conservatives — the very people who will reject him out of religious prejudice. “The great benefit of secularism is that it has left room for religious practice in our private lives while protecting it from the intolerance of religious fundamentalism — something that hasn't occurred in governments where secularism is despised. So, for someone to praise religious toleration while condemning secularism is to be simply ignorant of our history, and foolish about the possibilities of our future, if religion and government are not kept separate.” Romney, who once declared that “we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern,” made a 180-degree turn after becoming governor of Massachusetts, calling for the federal Constitution to be amended to ban same-sex marriage, and condemning a recent ruling by a judge in Iowa that overturned that state’s ban on such marriages. Romney, who depends on the conservative vote to be elected, now proudly proclaims that he has fought same-sex marriage “every way I have known how to,” as he said recently in Iowa, “and the fight isn’t over.”
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