That symphony? It's just noise

The Boston Globe has a story about Orrin Hatch supporting the City Hall Community Center. In it the reporter points out that

Hatch is one of the few national Republican leaders to offer a full-throated defense of the project on the basis of religious freedom

and points out that even Democratic Mormons have forgotten their religion's fight to build a temple in Belmont, Massachusetts - or at least refuse to see the similarities. She also notes that

In supporting the building of an Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero, Hatch is taking a position different from his fellow Mormon, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a Republican who is considered a strong contender for his party’s presidential nomination in 2012. Romney, who was a leading proponent of the Belmont temple, said through a spokesman that he opposes the proposed location for the lower Manhattan mosque.

A Globe editorial notes

THERE IS, in this country, an “essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom.’’ Indeed, “religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.’’ We know this because former Governor Mitt Romney reminded us of it when, during his presidential campaign, some fundamentalist Christians started raising objections to his Mormon faith.

The editorial points out that Romney's objection (‘‘The wishes of the families of the deceased and the potential for extremists to use the mosque for global recruiting and propaganda compel rejection of this site,’) besides being inaccurate* contains a dreadful irony:

the desire to curb freedom of religion on the grounds that other people are uncomfortable. The mere presence of Romney’s great-grandparents offended non-Mormon settlers in Utah, whose prejudices eventually drove the Romneys to seek a freer environment to practice their religion in Mexico.

But Romney wants to be president, and he's demonstrating yet again that this means he'll be as shallow as he has to, and jettison any potentially base-annoying belief, like this one:

“You can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me. And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion — rather, we welcome our nation’s symphony of faith.’’

Welcome it - just not in our backyards, or indeed any place we have to see it.

* only some of "the" families object, others are whole-heartedly behind it, just for a start...