Romney’s Religion Problem is Mine Too
I am a Mormon patent attorney in Utah. I travel frequently, and I can tell readers that even David Frum underestimates the prejudice faced by Mormons. I am the victim of the stigma associated with Mormonism in every corner. A friend of mine in Norfolk invited me and my family to a barbeque on the Fourth of July a long time ago when I was in a Naval commissioning program. When we got there, his born again wife wouldn’t let us on the property because we weren’t “Christians, ” so we had to leave. Almost the same thing happened in Bakersfield, CA, where my car was vandalized and keyed with anti-Mormon phrases by a pastor. A cop in Arkansas told me Utah license plates weren’t welcome in the state while ticketing me. When I tried to buy something at the U.S. commissary in Portugal with a valid military ID, I was thrown out because I was carrying a Portuguese Book of Mormon.
My mother was in Mitt Romney’s congregation before he ran for Senate in 1994. Romney excommunicated members of his congregation who had abortions, and their spouses if they let them. He’s always been against abortion. The whole flip-flopper label is itself a dishonest stigma imposed by evangelicals. He’s a principled man.