Article: So What if Mitt Romney's Grandfathers Had a Few Extra Wives

Omigawd! The world is going to come to an end, or if nothing else, wobble on its axis, because Mitt Romney's great-granddad and greater, great-great-granddad had a couple of extra wives.

According to an Associated Press story: Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor who's now trying 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.

Ironically, the AP didn't mention all the present-day Mormons who are practicing the same thing. It did mention that for a time their situation got too hot to handle and they moved -- lock, stock and wives -- to Mexico where the wouldn't be persecuted or prosecuted, and that was more than two hundred years ago.

Something could be said for being the product of a gene pool fortified by prolific, ver-ile, up-standing strands of DNA. They embraced polygamy...and took a lot of wives, and Romney doesn't run away from his heritage, he's publicly distanced himself from it.

Romney couldn't run away from his past if he wanted to. Too many books have been written about his family, and too many family members have left diaries in their wake.

Wow! Those little ancestral devils of Mitt's. His great-grandfather had five wives, and his great-great grandfather, Parley Pratt had twelve wives, while Parley's brother Orson was the first church official to publicly defend polygamy, saying God make them do it.

All those wives. All those begotten children. Well, maybe with silly names like Parley and Orson, the brothers had to do something to prove they were "real" men by bedding so many women and begetting a bunch of children...and that was without any help from Viagra.

Let's try to be fair here, which is hard to do when a Republican is involved. But visiting the "sins" of the great-great-greater-than-great grandfathers on the grandson can, but not always, be a tad unfair.

Sitting in judgment on a few souls who took the biblical commandment of go ye out there and multiply doesn't quite add up. The most critical will be all these god-fearers who love their bibles so much they are always thumping them, and throwing biblical advice at us as if it were the gospel.

They would be well-advised to remember that Mitt's ancestors were simply doing what they believed they were being told to do. If it were okay for biblical patriarchs whose words and deeds are so revered to have multiple wives, why are they being so harsh on poor Mitt just because he descended from men who did the same thing?

Who knows, Mitt might even make a good president...if nothing else he has a sense of humor. He's not in the least hesitant to joke about his polygamist forebears, and is noted for saying, "Marriage is between a man and a woman ... and a woman...and a woman."