I’m sure you all know that Mitt Romney had his atheist father-in-law baptized some 14 months after the man’s death. There’s an interesting report that talks about this as “cuckoo-for-cocopuffs” which is true I suppose, but I think not the real point.

Bill Maher comes closer to my main disagreement with such acts as Romney perpetrated on the dead guy in this “unbaptism” video clip.

I can imagine the outrage from the various religious pundits should a reddit crowd call a flashmob to ritually unbaptize the whole populace of city after city in the US.

Personally, I’d think it was hilarious but that’s because the dead don’t give a shit, and neither baptisms nor unbaptism have any effect on something that doesn’t exist. Their true effect is on the living.

And this is the root of my disgust with Romney and the kinds of religious people who are so deeply uncivil as to frack with other people’s choices.

Romney wants to be the leader of a democratic nation. It is a nation built on the idea that we as individuals have the right to make choices, and the obligation to live by those choices in a manner in accordance with civil law. This means Romney and his wife had a choice about becoming Mormons. They still have a choice to stay Mormon, or to desist.  Edward Davies, Romney’s father-in-law, also had a choice. And he made it. He was an atheist.

What Romney did by having the man baptized was declare that Davies’ choice did not matter and should not be considered sacrosanct. This is not a man I would like to see ruling a government that says it holds choice sacrosanct. I mean if he can so disrespect his own father-in-law, imagine what he might do to people he “rules”?

Of course since Davies’ is dead it doesn’t matter at all to him, but were he alive, I suspect he would be deeply ashamed of his daughter. I know I would be.  Shame on you Ann. You had the right to choose and expect that choice to be honoured. You should do the same.

So perhaps we should all just follow Bill Maher’s example, organize a flash mob and unbaptize all those people who were added (against their wishes) to the Mormon rolls in what is a very uncivil act against democracy. The dead don’t care, but the living do. And I expect it might stir up some interesting “conversation.” What such an unbaptism flash mob would declare is that choices do matter and that even if we do not agree with a specific choice, as long as it accords with the civil law by which we all must be guided, we will respect the right to choose and that we will act against those that do not respect the legal choices made by others.