LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk."

As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.

On marriage, he said he would lead an effort to pass a constitutional amendment affirming marriage as "one man, one woman, for life." On abortion, he needled the missing candidates and said "on this issue, our culture rises or falls." He backed the Iraq war, calling it a "theological war" against people "whose religious fanaticism will not be satisfied until every last one of us is dead, until our culture, our society, is completely obliterated from the face of the earth."

In the yes or no segment of the debate, Huckabee pledged himself to a long far-right wish-list, including:

-- support for ousted Alabama Chief Judge Roy Moore's court-stripping bill to keep federal courts from meddling with public officials who use their office to promote religion;

-- vetoes of hate crimes legislation, ENDA (anti-discrimination law), and the fairness doctrine;

-- stripping schools of federal funding for exposing children to "homosexual propaganda"; repealing IRS restrictions on churches endorsing candidates;

-- bringing back Bush's social security privatization plan;
imposing a ban on federal funding for any U.S. group that performs or advocates for abortion;

-- boosting federal abstinence spending to match contraceptive funding.

The Des Moines Register finds conservative Christians unpersuaded regarding Mitt Romney's claims about how his Mormon faith would affect a Romney presidency:

Most conservative Christian political activists and pastors who studied Mitt Romney's speech on Thursday addressing his Mormon faith agree it was something he had to do.

But few said it was strong enough to change the minds of evangelicals - a powerful force in Republican politics.

"It was a wise move on his part," said Chuck Hurley, a pro-family Christian activist and former Iowa legislator who has endorsed Gov. Mike Huckabee. "He is a gifted speaker and I would guess he will have mollified some people's concerns. But the more people investigate the beginnings of the Mormon church, the more uneasy they will be, and there's nothing he can do about that."

The Wall Street Journal found about the same thing.

But the former top political operative of the late religious right leader, D. James Kennedy is more than a little agitated. Gary Cass says in a press release:

"Mitt Romney, Presidential candidate and Mormon Bishop, in his speech regarding his Mormon faith sounded conciliatory towards other faiths. But his position is not consistent with the Mormon beliefs he adamantly affirmed in whole and from which he refused to distance himself. The Mormon faith has, from its inception, attacked all other religions, especially orthodox Christianity," said Dr. Gary Cass, Chairman and CEO of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.

"As a Bishop in the Mormon Church, Mitt Romney is free to believe Mormonism's doctrines, practice their secret rituals and take their sacred vows," said Cass, "but Romney's Mormon beliefs are not Christian. More importantly, he has not renounced Mormonism's historic antipathy toward Christianity. This is an important aspect of any evaluation the American voters make regarding his fitness for office."

"If Romney wants the Christian vote, more than the Mormon dollars supporting his campaign, he must demonstrate real respect, not rhetoric. If he does not renounce the historic Mormon hostility to Christianity, then we must conclude that he agrees with his church's defamation of the past."

Pastordan finds a whole lotta "faithiness" (adapted from Stephen Colbert's "truthiness") when it comes to Romney and a lot of what passes for political discussions of "faith."  

If a candidate is going to foreground their faith, then they should be responsible for the particulars of that faith. Most especially, they should own how they have lived that faith. After all, as somebody once said,  "Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord", will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven." If a candidate wants to play to faith, that's their prerogative. The prerogative of their audience is to hold him or her accountable for accurately representing their beliefs.

Honest conversation about faith is healthy and helpful. It clarifies beliefs, it gives insight into a candidate's motives and actions, and it promotes moral action over cynical expediency. As a matter of civic life, however, "faithiness" is corrosive. As long as the dynamic is propitiation more than mutual honesty and acceptance of difference, the process is bound to be miserable: