Obama's Religious Background, Does It Matter? Options

[fameONE]

For those of you that have been following, yet another, God-awful US election, you're well aware of the recent specualtions about Barack Obama being a Muslim. Does it really matter? What difference would it make if the man was a Scientologist?

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

Discuss.

EDIT: Can someone please correct the spelling in the title?

[absinthe]

Ideally, separation of church and state is wonderful.

But frankly, we're attempting to chose a leader whose supposed to represent the views and beliefs we as Americans hold while barely knowing who the candidates are. And I'm not talking about that fancy campaign image they'd like to believe we buy (which apparently some Americans do since we were gifted with two dumbshit terms of Bush) -- I'm talking real time. Hence, it isn't exactly surprising that people would look the candidates' respective religions as a basis for review -- especially since a good number of Americans assume stances on controversial issues based on the stances of their religious affiliation(s).

So I guess, to a certain degree it does make sense. IMO, religion is a good way to gather insight on the moral standings and practices of a person. And that should actually help, as, to the best of my knowledge, all the religions we deal with politically promote positive teachings and practices. The problem is the racism people associate to the practiced religion, and the accompanying misconceptions they might have which may shed an unfair negative light on any given candidate -- which I believe is Obama's gripe at the moment.

So personally, I think its fair game if analyzed properly. It's not as if we're voting for the government itself -- we're voting for the person. If we were really going to be true to separation of church and state all of our political leaders would be required to have no religious affiliations at all, which in itself is another form of religious affiliation. It just isn't possible.

Gahd, I'm all over the place in this post. Not sure if I conveyed what I was trying to, but I wrote it, so I might as well post it. ;) Hahaha.