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Pan, I think you missed my point. Among other things, Sharpton is a religious leader. He's certainly a civil rights leader and he's possibily a political leader. I'm viewing his comments almost strictly in his religious role. He's a conservative Babtist religiously (not politically conservative, etc. - those are separate). If you look at this as a statement by a religious leader in the context of Mormonism in the US historically I don't see where it's devisive or labelling or whatever you want to call it. It's no more than saying "Babtists won't vote for a Mormon" or "Pentacostals won't vote for a Jew" by a preacher in those faiths. Maybe they're right. I don't know. I see this as a throw-away line acknowledging that some voters won't vote for people of differing faiths. Is that somehow new? The "faithful" aren't going to vote a certain way? Haven't we heard that before, and hasn't it sometimes been true?
Labels are impossible to remove from our culture or any other culture. We're all unique, but we all fall into groups like employed, white, black, tall, short, assholes (I forget the rest of it). Labels are groups. Groups are labels. People in groups share common things. Labels are misused by ascribing things that aren't true to groups - like Jews being cheap or Auburn fans being bug-eaters. Sometimes labels are wrong. Not always.
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo
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