How backwards can you get. You don't understand a thing about the Mormon church. What you think you know is what someone else has told you, mostly agendized lies to keep hold of a congregation and thus a paycheck, and I sincerely doubt you've EVER gone to the source for information, or even an unbiased non-Mormon source like Jan Schipps for instance, a leading non-Mormon academic source on the LDS Church who points out the positive and a few of the negatives as well. But what you no doubt have gone to are the Michael Moore types like the Godmakers and other demagogues who fill their movies and books with outrageous, Michael Moore-like lies and people like you don't bother to look for a counterveiling viewpoint. Frankly, the sloppiness and deceit by the people who write those screeds and make those vile films that have been condemned by the National Council of Christians and Jews are just Michael Moores wearing a religious mantle.
I'm sorry, but you've fallen prey to deceit and believe it's scholarly research. I've been on both sides of this debate and I know the lies and deception spread by those who have an axe to grind against the LDS Church. I've seen the falsehoods of their claims first hand, so that is why I am entirely incredulous when you claim you've done some clear-headed and fair minded review of the LDS church. Your mean-spirited post that mocks what Mormons find sacred, and that you simply do not understand, makes that all too clear.
I have nothing more to say to someone with such backwards, and Islamic fundamentalist-like, views someone so stunted as to dismiss an otherwise worthy candidate based on religion. Just like the jihadists, you people use religion to divide, not unite, and to create anger and bitterness, not love and compassion as Jesus Christ taught.
Oh please - you didn't deny any of it....
"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship." (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)
"The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were "gods" and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him-for we can prevent Him, if we choose-He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said" (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)
It never made waves at all when Lewis wrote those things, it is only in the last 20 years that people with an axe to grind decided to spin that same idea into an attack on the LDS.