Don't Party too Hardy

I was wrapping up a conversation on the phone today with a man at work and he said, "don't party too hardy tonight." I quickly answered, "you don't have to worry about that, I'm Mormon."

He then told me that he was Catholic, which means "you can do whatever you want," he said. After we shared a laugh he told me a story about how years ago a Mormon taught him about religious tolerance.

He was preparing to enter the seminary and devote his life to the clergy but took a temporary job working on the railroad. He told me that when the other workers found out his intentions they teased him unmercifully and were very crude in the language they used around him.

A Mormon man working on the crew stood up to the men. Without cussing his Mormon friend told the men to knock it off and that "the only thing that mattered is that this man is doing his job."

He said the teasing stopped for good right then and there.

"Too many Christians don't tolerate anybody," he told me today, which made me think about Mitt Romney.

Much of what I read points to that being a major challenge in his bid for the presidency.