February 15, 2008 at 11:53:10

An Inconvenient Truth: Anti-Mormon Bias Sunk Romney

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By Suzanne Sataline, Posted by Skeeter Sanders (about the submitter) Page 2 of 4 page(s)

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Mormons were outraged. Hundreds complained to the show and on radio talk shows and the Internet, protesting that the remarks about church founder Joseph Smith were bigoted and unfounded. O'Donnell, a former MSNBC commentator who plays a lawyer for polygamists on the HBO drama "Big Love," says he has nothing to apologize for. "Everything I said was true," he says.

Although "The McLaughlin Group" said it will keep O'Donnell off the air for now, neither MSNBC nor HBO plans to take action against him, spokespeople from both networks said.

"The vast majority of Americans recognize that one of our strengths as a nation is our tolerance for religions that are different than our own," Fehrnstrom said. "Sadly, not every person thinks that way, but there's nothing that can be said or done to change their small minds."

Mormons Dismayed by Persistent Bias Against Them Nearly 180 Years After Church's Founding

For Mormons, O'Donnell's comments were a rallying cry. Members of the church are taught not to argue with outsiders over faith. But as criticism of their faith rose to new heights during the campaign, the Mormons took on their antagonists like never before, in a wave of activism encouraged by church leadership.

Mormon leaders and church members say they were initially unprepared for the intensity of attacks, which many say were unprecedented in modern times. The attacks, they say, are a sign that, nearly 180 years after their church's founding, their long struggle for wide acceptance in America is far from over, despite global church expansion and prosperity.

On the Internet, the Romney bid prompted an outpouring of broadsides against Mormonism from both the secular and religious worlds. Evangelical Christian speakers who consider it their mission to criticize Mormon beliefs lectured to church congregations across the country.

Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the Catholic journal First Things, wrote that a Mormon presidency would threaten Christian faiths. Atheist author Christopher Hitchens called Mormonism "a mad cult" on Slate.com, and Bill Keller, a former convict who runs an online ministry in Florida, told a national radio audience that a vote for Romney was a vote for Satan.

"It seems like it's been open season on Mormons," says Marvin Perkins, a Los Angeles Mormon Church member who lectures about the history of blacks in the church.

Romney Speech on His Faith, Reminiscent of JFK, Failed to Change Evangelicals' Minds

Romney was reluctant to speak publicly about his religion. Eventually, senior advisers persuaded him to do so to allay voter concerns about how it might affect his decision-making as president.

Inevitably, comparisons were made to a now-famous 1960 campaign speech that another presidential candidate from Massachusetts, then-Senator John F. Kennedy, who became America's first Roman Catholic president, delivered to an audience of Southern Baptists. Although Romney's December speech was well-received by political pundits, it did little to move his polling numbers upward.

That same month, M. Russell Ballard, one of the Mormon Church's 12 apostles, or governors, urged students at a graduation at the church-owned Brigham Young University to use the Internet and "new media" to defend the faith. At least 150 new Mormon sites were created and registered with the site mormon-blogs.com. "People were haranguing us on the Internet," Ballard said in an interview. "I just felt we needed to unleash our own people."

Normally insular church leaders, with help from Washington-based consultant Apco Worldwide, began a public-relations campaign last fall, visiting 11 editorial boards of newspapers across the country. In another first, the church posted a series of videos, some featuring Ballard, on YouTube to counter a wave of anti-Mormon footage on the site.

Many Mormons were excited by Romney's candidacy. "There's a member of the tribe that's up there," Nathan Oman, an assistant professor at William and Mary School of Law, said last month, adding that he had not yet decided whom to vote for. "What happens to him is a test of whether or not our tribe gets included in the political universe."

Polygamy, Doctrinal Differences at Root of Antipathy Toward Mormons

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