I don’t much like Mitt Romney.  I disagree with his positions on several issues: he’s anti-abortion (fairly recently it seems and still with some exceptions); he supports a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman; and he supports the use of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" and refuses to define waterboarding as torture. 

I don’t know how much of this is the "real" Mitt, or how much is a hard-line veneer adopted to appeal to the conservative base of the Republican Party.  Either way, he won’t get my vote. 

That all said, I do feel a little sorry for Mitt these days.  It’s that speech he gave about his Mormon faith yesterday at the George Bush Presidential Library. 

According to this New York times article:

"Evangelical Christians, who make up a crucial voting block in the Republican Party, consider Mormonism to be heretical, and polls have indicated a significant number of Americans are less likely to vote for a Mormon presidential candidate."

Hey folks, it’s 2007!  It’s nearly 50 years since John F. Kennedy reassured Americans that it was OK to have a Catholic president.  Haven’t we moved on? 

Apparently not.  The fact the Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith is even an issue in 2007, and the fact that he felt it necessary to give his speech yesterday is sad evidence of just how much narrow-mindedness, fear, and intolerance there really is in this country.