Mormon factor

AS an active Mormon, former Mormon missionary (and someone who happens to not support Mitt Romney for president), I was encouraged by Tim Rutten’s scathing attack on AmeriKa’s liberal and conservative media elite who shockingly hint or even baldly proclaim that Romney is unqualified to be president merely because he believes in the tenets of the Mormon Church [“Romney’s Religious Rights,” Jan. 13].

Thank God, literally, for at least one brave soul in the vast sea of silence willing to expose the intellectual hypocrisy of today’s media moral midgets and their counterparts in the spiritual leadership of much of America’s religious right.

BILL LITSTER

Boise, Idaho

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I disagree in part with Rutten. I have every right -- and even an obligation -- to select a president whose intellect I trust. I might well distrust a president whose intellect allows him to believe that Joseph Smith, a con artist of the first order, found golden plates from God, or who subscribes to Mormonism’s belief, which I find sexist and ridiculous, that women cannot be church elders.

It is naive to think one can so cleanly separate the religious from the political, because it ignores the reality that one’s religious beliefs can and do slop over into public policy positions and decisions.

E. LYNN MALCHOW

Pasadena

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I’M not sure how a Mormon president could be any more dangerous to our democracy than Christian fundamentalists are now.

Rutten quotes Jacob Weisberg as saying he wouldn’t vote for someone who believed in the “whoppers” of Mormonism. Millions of Americans believe in the whoppers of creationism, so comparing whoppers among religions is problematic. The key is whether a candidate is able to make decisions rationally and intelligently.

FRANCES SEGAL

Laguna Niguel