The Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan Won’t Give Up The Mormon Thing

In April, Daily Beast columnist Andrew Sullivan said that a presidential election between a man who is black and a man who is Mormon demonstrated the “racial and religious progress” of our nation. Even though former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney‘s faith wasn’t relevant to his capacity to be president, Sullivan said, his candidacy was “an amazing and very American thing.” So then why now has Sullivan taken to attacking Mormonism?

“Where’s The Line Between A Religion And A Cult?” two of Sullivan’s recent blog headlines asked. Faith has now become relevant to Romney’s candidacy, according to Sullivan, as part of a “legitimate question about the identity and character and beliefs of a man running for the highest office in the land.”

Religion has long been something voters use to identify a candidate and understand his or her values. Romney’s father, Michigan Gov. George Romney, invited the press to a Mormon sacrament meeting with him during his 1968 presidential run, but the younger Romney seems less willing to be that open. His relative silence on religion likely stems from the discrimination Mormons face (that and the fact that he loves to talk about the economy). Indeed, the latest Gallup poll showed eighteen percent of voters would not vote “for a well-qualified presidential candidate who happens to be a Mormon.”

Discrimination against Mormons was once severe, with early Mormons being violently driven from their homes. Today it ranges from voters unwilling to consider a Mormon candidate to people expressing discomfort with a close relative marrying a Mormon (a Washington Post poll released Monday showed twenty percent of respondents felt uncomfortable with the idea). As a Mormon myself, it can mean suspicion from people who hold you at arms length or unoriginal jokes about “magic underwear.” Frequently, the word “cult” is used.

But whether Mormonism is a cult or not is a matter of semantics. And, besides, many religions could be classified that way. Sullivan even admits there are aspects of his Catholic religion that he considers cult-like. The bottom line is that the word has a negative connotation, and it’s a word that separates and discriminates.

RELATED: Mitt Romney Is A Mormon, Get Over It

Sullivan says the cultish qualities of Mormonism are worth exploring, but to what end? “Why were Ann Romney‘s non-Mormon parents barred from attending her own Temple sealing?” he writes. To which I respond: What does that have to do with Romney’s campaign, policies or potential administration?

Sullivan labels the Book of Mormon a “mysterious new text” that was created by a “scam operation and written in excruciating faux King James Bible English” as evidence that Mormonism is a cult, but again, what does that have to do with Romney the candidate?

The difference between discrimination against religious groups and that against other minorities is that religion is, by nature, discriminatory. It requires an individual to choose one set of beliefs over another. But people can disagree over the validity of Mormonism or any other religion while still being respectful about it and not discriminating against people of any particular faith.

Evidence that anti-Mormonism has become less acceptable has grown in the past several months. Bloomberg BusinessWeek‘s recent cover depicting the resurrected John the Baptist restoring the priesthood to founding Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, with a cartoon bubble referencing the church’s business assets, was panned as disrespectful, and Joel Osteen, pastor of one of the largest Christian churches in the U.S. told Wolf Blitzer that despite Mormonism’s differences with traditional Christianity, he considered them “brothers in Christ.” When Pastor Robert Jeffress called Mormonism a “cult” in October, Anderson Cooper pressed him, and a squirming Jeffress confessed that “cult” was a loaded term.

Sullivan wrote that he is “not going to be intimidated by accusations of ‘prejudice’” when discussing the faith, but for someone who has written about the struggle for rights other minority groups face, calling Mormonism a cult and belittling the faith doesn’t seem like it’s “on the right side of history.”

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.