Al Sharpton is being attacked for being intolerant of religion by people who have utter contempt for every faith in America other than Baptist

First, let's clear the air here. This is all about Don Imus. The Republicans are livid that Imus, who they consider one of their own, lost his job after finally being called out for his ten-plus years of vile bigotry. Imus would publicly excoriate George Bush, and we loved him for it, so it's hard to see why the GOP thinks Imus is one of theirs - he's not. But the GOP does have a patent on the bigot thing, so it's understandable why they simply figured Imus would be a Republican.

Anyway, I have to laugh when FOX News and the rest of the far-right (read: Baptists) have the gall to attack anyone for being intolerant of other faiths. The far-right of the Republican party has contempt for every faith in America other than Baptist. They call Catholics a "Satanic counterfeit," Reform Judaism is roundly criticized as being too liberal and thus not serious, Episcopalians and Methodists and Lutherans (the tolerant ones) are called fringe and irrelevant, and we know what they call Muslims (remember, Mohammed was a pedophile, or that's what the religious right leaders said). So now they're all upset that Al Sharpton mentioned that Mitt Romney was a Mormon.

This issue, Mitt Romney's Mormonism, came up on CNN this past weekend when I was on Howie Kurtz's show. Howie asked me, in shock, how I could suggest that it was relevant to the presidential campaign to discuss Mitt Romney's Mormonism. Well, if Mitt Romney can discuss my rights as a gay American in terms of how it jibes with his understanding of the Book of Mormon, then I think I have a right to inquire just what is this Book of Mormon that Mr. Romney wants to impose on me and my private life. Same goes for any other candidate who embraces anyone who uses their faith to tell anyone else in America how to live.

But this is the way conservatives always act. They always try to tell the rest of us how to live, and use their own religion (or their own screwed up, usually bigoted, interpretation of what they think their religion says) to justify their fatwahs. They even go so far as to tell the rest of us that our religion is wrong and theirs is right. On gay marriage, for example, several religions, like reform Judaism and some Episcopal churches, perform gay marriages, so how can Republicans and their religious right allies justify using the Bible to ban gay marriage when some religions support gay marriage? They can't - they're simply trying to legislate THEIR religion over OURS. And that makes their religion relevant to the public debate because THEY made it relevant.

Again, these are people who say that Catholics aren't even Christians. They're people who have the nerve to tell the world's one billion Muslims that they worship a pedophile. These are people who tell us that we caused September 11 because God hates fags. These are the intolerant "religious" freaks that Mitt Romney is embracing, and we don't have the right to inquire just what Mr. Romney embraces?

They brought religion into the picture, not us.

And PS. If Mitt Romney were a Scientologist would his religion still be irrelevant? (FYI, Romney did recently say his favorite novel was "Battlefield Earth," which was written by the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.)