Seen elsewhere: "I really don't think Obama would be well-served by attacking any mainstream religion. And for better or worse, Mormonism is mainstream."
Mormons believe Joseph Smith used magic rocks to translate a mysteriously absent document from ancient Hebrew into a strange kind of anachronistic, pidgin English that reads like a high school student's imitation of the KJV, or a Monty Python skit. They believe that Native Americans are a lost tribe of Israel, even though DNA evidence (and common sense) clearly disproves the idea. They believe that horses roamed the continent at a time they are known to have been extinct, and that chariots were commonplace when the wheel had yet to be invented on the continent. They believe temple garment underwear will ward off evil. They practice baptism on dead people.
The fact is that the religion has so many weird beliefs and practices (even discounting the ones that have been recently reversed or recanted) that the only reason it might be considered "mainstream" is that we really haven't had a frank, open national discussion about what the religion is and all of the weird things that it preaches. We like the fresh-faced, nice guys in their suits and we think of them as harmless, clean-living and family-oriented people (in my personal experience they do care greatly about family, particularly when the family members happen to be Mormon). Mormonism has been successful at maintaining a veil of privacy (some might say secrecy) about the true extent of their activities, and that approach has allowed them to successfully elude public scrutiny.
Obviously, evangelical Republicans hate Barack Obama more than they love the integrity of their religion, so they are willing to gloss over the cult-like beliefs and practices of Mormonism and are willing to consider it in some vague way just another Christian denomination. (If Mormons tended to vote Democrat, that shotgun marriage would be over in a New York minute).
Mormons might be mainstream. Mormonism isn't.
As somebody who hopes that Mitt Romney will not be elected (as much for economic reasons as for his religious proclivities), the only wedge I would want to drive is between swing voters and the lies that they are being told about how "mainstream" Mitt Romney's religion is. I think if more Americans knew the extent of Mormon practices and beliefs, the less comfortable they would be about anybody who is such a prominent participant in such a weird religion.
FV
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