Cult Of Personalities

One of those freedoms that we here in the United States enjoy is the freedom of speech, which is odd, since it sometimes bumps up against other freedoms, such as our freedom of religion. There has been plenty of rumbling about whether or not we could survive with a Mormon as President of our great land. All that talk of magic underwear and Frontier Jesus, not to mention an avoidance of caffeinated beverages, makes people nervous. It doesn't seem to matter that we've had a Muslim in the White House for the past four years, so why start getting nervous now?
Maybe because we're not as tolerant as we make ourselves out to be. For the past week or so, I have avoided wading into the whole Tom/Katie pool of sorrow. Tom Cruise is neither Muslim nor Mormon. He is a Scientologist. That means that his beliefs are crazy and his wife and children should flee them as if their very lives depended on it. Doubters point to the practice of using an "e-meter" as an interrogation device, answering lengthy lists of questions founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote that a member should be asked by an "ethics officer" to make sure they weren't hiding any covert hostilities to the organization. Even if that member is only six years old. Then there's all that science fiction stuff about Thetans and so on that makes us rational folk frightened. You know, those of us who believe that there is a ghost that hovers around us, forgiving us whenever we remember to ask him to, or those of us who have no qualms about whittling on newborn's privates.
I'm not going to make excuses for Tom or Katie, just like I won't exclude my choices for elected office based on their spiritual beliefs. When those beliefs start to cross the line into policy decisions, then we have something called a Theocracy, and that's something right-thinking Americans have avoided ever since we stopped putting "In God We Trust" on all of our currency. Wait a minute -