While not voting Republican, I think it's interesting to read that the head of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard Land, is making a distinction between Guiliani's many marriages, affairs, and divorces AND McCain's  marriage, affairs, and divorce. Sen. John McCain (affair, divorce), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (affair, divorce, affair, divorce), and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (divorce, affair, nasty divorce).  (Or, as Washington Monthly put it, since there are 3 Republican candidates who are adulterers, What if three admitted adulterers run for president and no one cares?  I recall reading about Guiliana, PRE-9/11's very public messing around with the woman he is now married too after treating his then current wife very shabbily.. it wasn't just that it wasn't his first marriage but that he didn't care that it was all over the papers; heck, his own children don't want to appear with him in public. (I don't have to mention, do I, about Newt Gingrich admitting yesterday that he was an adulterer, screwing a congressional aide, at the SAME TIME he and others were going after Clinton for the SAME THING?). I read yesterday that John McCain ALSO was an adulterer, and had many affairs after returning from Vietnam, and is married NOW to one of his affair partners, Cindy

All things being equal, here's what interested me in the article about Richard Land's comments.

Land noted that Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been married twice, but said the Arizona senator has acknowledged his part in the failure of his first marriage.

"It's a molehill compared to Giuliani's mountain," Land said. "When you're a war hero [like McCain], you have less to prove on the character front."

So. Let's see. On the one hand, you have a man who is a serial adulterer, divorced two wives, married his affair partner... and the SAME THING on the other hand, except Door #1 only did it one time but apparently with more affair partners. But one is BETTER than the other because he went to WAR? Is the Southern Baptist Convention saying that being pro-war is a PLUS that gets you a bye on the other 10 Commandment Fauxs? Do Southern Baptists want to be the religion of war-mongerers?

I'm talking about hypocrisy here, and NOT just the hypocrisy of Republicans who wanted so badly to be morally superior to others (and whose shaky claim to that was ripped down with the Mark Foley page scandal) but also the hypocrisy of a religion which, at least in my opinion, represents the Prince of Peace ala "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God". Not for the Southern Baptists, who exalt war, and will even give a pass to adultery AS LONG AS the adulterer has been to war.

Were it me at the head of a religious organization and I had two (or three) choices for political office that were scummy, I wouldn't do a "Well, this one is Less Evil Than the Second, so let's vote for him". Or maybe I just wouldn't tie my religious organization to politics and let it stay a separate, personal realm for my parishioners.