OK, let me get something out of the way. I love "Ender's Game." It is a really fun novel, and I hope it is made into a movie some day. Oh, and I suddenly have an urge to read the Alvin Maker series.
Having said that, I find the author of these novels, Orson Scott Card, a completely perplexing individual. Or maybe completely predictable. He is perplexing because as intelligent as he is, he seems unable to parse the problems of the LDS Church in a realistic fashion. He is completely predictable, because like many intelligent people who continue to cooperate with authoritarian regimes, he has a fancy set of partitions and blinders that help him stay on the right side of the regime.
Card begins a recent article entitled "Is Mitt Romney Serious?" with a slew of disparaging comments about Hillary Clinton and high praise for the probity of Mitt Romney. Is *this* guy serious? I quote:
"Everyone knows that Christian evangelicals hate Mormons so badly that if they had to choose between a bribe-taking, FBI-file-stealing, relentless-lie-telling, mud-slinging former first lady, and a Mormon ex-governor who doesn't lie, who's still married to his first wife, and who supports the entire Christian evangelical agenda, they'd still rather die than vote for a Mormon."
All I can say, Orson, is that you have devoted at least part of your dear soul to sheer lunacy. First of all, in your contention that Christian evangelicals would rather vote for Hillary Clinton than a Mormon man, you are laughably off target. I think it should be abundantly clear by now that what Americans really fear is a female president. I am sure evangelicals would be happy to overlook Mitt's Mormonism in order to get his maleness, whiteness, and dubious, opportunistic social conservatism. They, and millions of other more closeted misogynists, would happily sell their mothers to get to the polls to oppose a woman occupying the Oval Office. The fact that it is Hillary they would be opposing only provides a pretext to hide their deep hatred and fear of women.
As for your conviction regarding the moral probity of Mitt, this too is evidence of your indulgence of illusion. Mitt is not honest. The guy betrayed his polygamist ancestry in order to head off the gay lobby's political use of Mormon polygamy. He said that the federal government had been correct in harrassing and persecuting the religious practices of his own ancestors! I would say that if evangelicals have any reason to be afraid of Mitt, that would be the right one.
The fantasy continues:
"They try to leave the impression that the Mormon Church is racist, wacko, breeding like flies, and obscenely rich. "This tithing has helped the church amass an estimated $30 billion in wealth," says The Week. "Mormon holdings include the biggest beef ranch in the world and the largest producer of nuts in the U.S."
Here Card blames the press for attacking the LDS Church instead of facing the issues. In truth, the LDS Church does have things to answer for. I am sorry that Mitt has to take the brunt of this (am I?), but if his beloved Church had acted with sensitivity, integrity, and openness, he wouldn't have half of the troubles he is having.
Let's face it, the African American community has not let the United States off the hook for slavery (and rightly so), and so it is even less likely that the LDS Church will be let off the hook for an implicitly racist theology that persists to this day. And, for the record, I think the Church should be actively pursued by black activists for failing to apologize for racist doctrines and practices.
In other words, let's be realistic instead of whiney. Is it *fair* that people attack Mitt's Mormonism? Is it classy? Hell no! But since when is politics about fairness or class? (Well, it's obviously got a lot to do with social class, but that is not what I mean.) My guess is that Americans continue to be suspicious of Mormonism, and that they believe they have good reasons to feel that way. Mitt will pay for it. The Church and its membership can continue to indulge in persecution scripts, or they can actually openly and honestly address the issues that make others uncomfortable.
There is much talk about Mitt's situation being comparable to Kennedy and his Catholicism. I think there is a *huge* difference here. Sure, at the time people thought that Kennedy might obey the pope instead of acting in the interests of this country. Now we know that American Catholics listen to the pope about like they read Leviticus. They recognize his authority and largely ignore him when convenient. As a Catholic acquaintance of mine once said, "the only way to be an American Catholic is to attend mass and otherwise act like a Protestant."
Mormons have quite a different relationship with their prophet. And all Mormons know this. *They* even contrast him with the pope. Any Mormon can tell you that while the pope is both infallible and ignored, the Mormon prophet is fallible only when you need to make an excuse for him. Otherwise his most irrelevant muttering on Larry King is obsessed over with amazing energy.
It also makes a huge difference that Utah is smack dab in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, while the Vatican is located in Italy. Mormons aspired to have an independent theocratic nation in the Mountain West not even a century and a half ago. Brigham Young sympathized with the Confederacy. He enshrined racism in Mormon theology. Mormons authorities lied repeatedly about the practice of polygamy to the government and their own people.
In other words, unlike the pope, the Mormon prophet has been America's homegrown issue for many, many decades. The fact that this is still an issue in the Romney campaign is less evidence of human prejudice, which we can take for granted as always being present, than of the failure of the LDS Church to deal with uncomfortable issues in a satisfactory manner. The Church must bear the responsibility for this failure. One cannot rely on the fairness of American politics or the uprightness of the press on the best of days. Mormonism's leaders and rank-and-file members should stop whining and do something about things they can change.
Somehow, I am not confident they will.
