Clearing the Air or Muddying the Waters -- Politics and Religion

John Kenney writes an op-ed piece in today's LA Times that I think follows up on Mitt Romney's recent attempt to clear up things on his religious beliefs by muddying the water. Mitt is famous for his flip-flops (must be something in the Massachusetts water) and in speaking to his faith commitments and the relationship they have to his political views/actions he was probably more opaque than transparent. He's for separation of church and state except where he's not -- you know what I mean.

Well, Kenney offers a rather ironic/strange/opaque look at this issue with a speech of his own.

Here is just a taste -- in a section about the wall of separation. I think it's rather interesting -- in part because no matter our rhetoric we each seem to have our own definitions:

There are some who say that the founding fathers themselves were adamant about a separation between church and state. Jefferson once wrote of "building a wall of separation between church and state." I know this because I had an aide look it up on Wikipedia because I wanted to make it appear as though I knew something about the founding fathers, which I do not.

But what did Jefferson mean by "wall"? What if there's a door in the wall? Or a window? Some walls are thin. I live in a new development, and I can literally hear the couple next door when they're intimate simply by using the bottom of a drinking glass and holding my breath.

My point is that walls come in many shapes and sizes, and although walls can divide us, walls can also bring us together. And perhaps this is what the founding fathers meant, that church and state must be kept apart but also brought together by a wall with a door in it, be it French doors or a window unit. That is my position exactly.

Indeed, what is the point? What's your take on the permeability of this so-called wall?