A Provo, Utah newspaper has confirmed our earlier story - a Mormon geneological Web site does in fact list President Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, as having been baptized into the Mormon faith after her death (and presumably without her, or her son's, consent). The Mormon church has yet to respond to numerous reporters' inquiries whether they did in fact baptize the President's dead mother last year in the middle of the presidential campaign. If true, and it's looking increasingly likely, this could cause the Mormons quite a bit of trouble politically and in the public relations sphere.
Still unanswered is whether the Mormons also baptized Obama's father.
More from the Provo Herald Extra:
At the same time that Barack Obama sealed the Democratic nomination for president last year, someone in the Provo LDS Church temple was performing a baptism and temple rites for his dead mother.
The move is a serious breech of protocol for church members, who in the past have been criticized for performing such proxy baptisms for victims of the Holocaust.
"Church members are specifically instructed not to submit the names of persons not related to them," reads a statement on the LDS Chuch Web site. "Before performing temple baptisms for a deceased family member born within the last 95 years, members are instructed to get permission from the person's closest living relative."
Officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have yet to confirm the incident, but records on their FamilySearch.org genealogical site clearly show that Stanley Ann Dunham received proxy rites in the Provo temple on June 4 and June 8 of 2008. The birth and death dates of the person for whom the rites were performed match those of Obama's mother.
