Mitt Romney's religion is back in the news this week thanks to a flood of articles saying it shouldn't be. While the Los Angeles Times reports "Obama and Romney shun confrontation on religion," Richard Cohen of the Washington Post declared "Mitt Romney's faith is his business." Two weeks before Cohen's colleague Jason Horowitz asked "Is Mitt Romney's Mormonism fair game," Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod answered no.
As it turns out, the Romney campaign's "Jewish" test for the fairness of press coverage about Mitt's religion may create more problems than it solves. After all, for years Mitt Romney's rhetoric on religious diversity in America suggests he believes some faiths are more equal than others.
As the Post's Horowitz explained last week, "Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has developed a simple method to determine whether coverage of the candidate's Mormonism has crossed a line":

"Our test to see if a similar story would be written about others' religion is to substitute 'Jew' or 'Jewish,' " Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul wrote in objection to a Washington Post article last fall about the candidate's role as a church leader in Boston.
She pointed out a passage that explained a central tenet of Mormonism. It described the belief that Christ's true church was restored after centuries of apostasy when the 19th-century prophet Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from golden plates that he discovered in Upstate New York.
"Would you write this sentence in describing the Jewish faith?" Saul asked in a November e-mail, adding: " 'Jews believe their prophet Moses was delivered tablets on a mountain top directly from G-d after he appeared to him in a burning bush.' Of course not, yet you reference a similar story in Mormonism."

As for Romney himself, the line against inquiries into Mormon doctrine is more like a brick wall.
When Piers Morgan of CNN asked him last year, "What is the Mormon position on homosexuality being a sin?" Governor Romney responded:

"I'm not a spokesman for my church. And one thing I'm not going to do in running for president is become a spokesman for my church or apply a religious test that is simply forbidden by the constitution, I'm not going there. If you want to learn about my church, talk to my church."

Four and a half years ago during his much-hyped "Faith in America" speech, Romney similarly explained that "No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith" and warned:

"There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution."

Sadly, Romney during his last presidential bid endorsed precisely that very religious test for followers of Islam or no faith at all.
In November 2007, the former Massachusetts Governor said as much to Mansoor Ijaz at a fundraiser in Las Vegas. As Ijaz recounted:

I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "...based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

Despite Romney's subsequent denials, Greg Sargent and Steve Benen documented other witnesses and other occasions during which Mitt repeated his No Muslims Need Apply policy.

Given his own membership in a small religious minority, one might expect more openness and tolerance from the Mormon Romney. But in 2006, Romney declared "People in this country want a person of faith to lead them as their president." In December 2007, Governor Romney upped the ante by insisting "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." And in his "Faith in America" speech that month, Mitt seemingly added atheists to his list of those to be excluded from the American community (around the 7:30 mark):

"I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims."

(Just as long as those frequent prayers weren't going to be heard in President Romney's Cabinet Room.)
That nonbelievers had no place in leading Mitt Romney's America was remarked upon by conservative commentators at the time. While Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review asked "what about atheists and agnostics?" David Brooks of the New York Times concluded that Romney "asked people to submerge their religious convictions for the sake of solidarity in a culture war without end." former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan wondered:

"Why did Mr. Romney not do the obvious thing and include them? My guess: It would have been reported, and some idiots would have seen it and been offended that this Romney character likes to laud atheists. And he would have lost the idiot vote."

And in 2012, that was a voting bloc Mitt Romney was determined not to lose. Which is what brought him to Lynchburg, Virginia last month to address the graduates of the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.
During a speech in which he never mentioned the word "Mormon" (he used it once in his Faith in America address in 2007), Romney tried to explain to his evangelical audience "where we can meet in common purpose." Surely, Romney suggested to applause, they could agree on this (around the 9:00 minute mark):

It strikes me as odd that the free exercise of religious faith is sometimes treated as a problem, something America is stuck with instead of blessed with. Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government.
But from the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man. Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. And whether the cause is justice for the persecuted, compassion for the needy and the sick, or mercy for the child waiting to be born, there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.

Romney's message may come as a surprise to the millions of non-Christians in the United States of America. Before uttering that last sentence, Mitt Romney should have substituted atheist, agnostic, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or, yes, Jewish. Apparently, the Romney campaign's Jewish test exists only to benefit its own candidate.
As Rabbi Hillel explained the Golden Rule not long before the time of Jesus, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor."