Sunday, December 16, 2007

Mitt Romney and his tears over blacks being admitted to the mormon church

Romney this morning probably pre-empted a question by the ever-sharp moderator Tim Russert when he said that he was so touched by the fact that the Mormon church finally allowed blacks full membership in 1978 that he cried. Here's what he said today - with his typical bad-actor lack of sincerity:

“I can remember when I heard about the change being made. I was driving home from — I think it was law school, but I was driving home — going through the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I heard it on the radio and I pulled over and literally wept.

“Even to this day, it’s emotional,” Romney added.

What was so funny about the second line is that Romney seemed to almost be forcing himself to feel some type of painful emotion that he hoped would be conveyed in his voice.

Revisiting an article posted on CBS News in November (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/15/the_skinny/main3505361.shtml), I get an entirely different opinion of how Romney at first described his feelings on the issue.

Back in the U.S. at Brigham Young, when boycotts and violent protests over the university's virtually all-white sports teams broke out at away games, he stayed on the sidelines.

At the time, the Mormon Church excluded blacks from full membership, considering them spiritually unfit as the result of a biblical curse on the descendants of Noah's son Ham.

A handful of students and prominent Mormons called for an end to the doctrine, but Romney wasn't one of them. When he heard over a car radio in 1978 that the church would offer blacks full membership, he said, he pulled over and cried.

Does the article make this sound to be tears of joy?? I don't think so and neither does anyone else who has read this.

People are entitled to change their opinions and sentiments - many people have changed in the past twenty five years (and some tend to change every election cycle) - so this isn't bashing Romney for what he might have felt back in 1978. But, I want to know does he really still feel the same way today?

He also didn't indidate what "emotional" means? Was he "emotional" because he didn't want blacks sitting next to him in church? Or was he "emotional" because he did - and if this is the case, why was it that he wasn't one of the people who called for an end to the exclusion of blacks?

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