Romney's Mormon Burden Rises Again

The AP reports:

While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great grandfathers had 12.

Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.

Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.

Seriously, his great-grandfather? How about checking on the all the other candidates' great-grandparents to see if there is some dirt? Did any of them support segregation? Oppose women's rights? Hate Jews? It wouldn't surprise me if at least some did. But are we going to hear about it? Doubtful. This story is inappropriate. It serves no purpose other than to make the "Mormons are weird" point.

Views on Mormons: Not Good for Romney

I like Mitt Romney and I hope he does well. But there's no doubt his Mormonism is going to make things tough in this race. On top of the explicit bigotry, even an article that tries to take a detached view and examine public perceptions of Mormons shows how people have trouble getting over their anti-Mormon bias. The author writes:

But even the story about the church's founding is unusual to nonbelievers: God appeared to Joseph Smith and told him that all existing forms of Christianity were "an abomination" and then directed Smith to a hillside in upstate New York where, with the help of the angel Moroni, Smith recovered a set of golden tablets that revealed the real word of God. Smith had further revelations, which Mormons treat as scripture alongside the Bible, including that Jesus would eventually return to reign from Missouri. Smith was eventually killed by vigilantes.

The story is "unusual"? How is it any more "unusual" than the stories of the origin of other religions?

The author also mentions that the Mormon church used to be formally racist and a long, long time ago officially practiced polygamy. OK, sure, these are skeletons, but are they worse than what other religions have? Not to me.

If this is what people are writing in the Washington Post, I hate to hear what they are whispering in private.