In Defense of Romney's Mormonism

I have had about enough of this.

Reading various blogs, sites and forums has convinced me that a large portion of anti-Romney folks oppose him simply for belonging to the Mormon faith: I've even witnessed it within my own family.

Here's an example from one my close relatives: I've been reading about Mormonism; it's messed up! Wouldn't it be better to re-elect President Obama, at least he's a Christian.

I spent last night researching the history of Mormonism and the claims that anti-Mormons often say about the religion that has over fourteen million followers in the world; half in the United States.

So what did I learn?

For one thing, most of their arguments concerning the weird doctrines of Mormonism are out of date. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young had many, shall we say, interesting theories on how life began and how life should be lived, including the thought that Adam was originally a god and that all men could become one.

However, most never mention the fact these claims were questioned immediately by most Mormons - even when the two were still alive and the theory was officially kicked out of the church in the 1890's, leaving only fundamentalist's not recognized by the church as the only practitioners of the discredited notions.

For another, I realized this long before my research, but Mormons are not afraid to fight for socially conservative values that are shared by both Catholic and Protestant Christians. They were fighting on the ground for proposition 8 to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman and they got attacked viciously for their efforts.

This stems from their history as a religion under siege. They are the only faith, in my knowledge, to have war declared on them by various state governments and at one point the federal government in the then-Utah territory towards the 1860's. They survived all this while on the frontier; don't think a liberal media's gonna stop them.

In conclusion, most anti-Mormon opinions stem from bigotry pure and simple, or simply from fear. Much like America refused to elect a Catholic President for almost two hundred+ years because of misconceived stupidity, the same folks are preaching against Mitt Romney because he's different.

He has five children; been married for four decades; doesn't drink coffee, and he tithes 10% to his religion every year. In our society today, that's quite unusual, but it's also something to look at with envy. Mormons have managed to remain married, faithful, moral and devout when most have kicked that to the curve.

We need more of that; not less.