Lying for the Lord

It's a Mormon thing. It's called Lying for the Lord. And it's a tenet of the Mormon faith that, Mormons think, gives them to the right to tell you a bald-faced lie, so long as it's a lie that somehow furthers the Mormon cause.

What else to call the Mormon's laughable statement today that their posthumous baptism last year of President Obama's mother was a "rare" mistake that might have been done by "pranksters."

Yes, we're to believe that the Mormons, just by coincidence, forcibly converted a presidential candidate's deceased mother, 13 years after her death, and only months before the presidential election. And we're also to believe no warning bells went off at Mormon Central when they saw that the woman's husband, whose name is clearly listed on her "baptismal record," is "Barack Hussein Obama." (Obama's father has the same name.) Yes, all one big unfortunate "rare" mistake. Kind of like a clerical error. Except instead of giving you the wrong change, they just stole your mother's soul.

The Mormons would have you believe that this kind of thing - forcibly converting the dead of other faiths to Mormonism, without their families' permission - is something that only happens once in a blue moon. Tell that to the families of Holocaust victims who have been trying to get the Mormons to stop baptizing their dead for over a decade. The Mormons even promised to stop forcibly converting Jewish Holocaust victims, back in 1995, only for it to be revealed a few months ago that - surprise! - they didn't really stop.

It's ghoulish to be sure, but it's neither rare nor a mistake. It's what the Mormons do. And when they get caught, they lie about it, just as they're lying to our President today, and just as they've been lying to the Jews for over a decade.

Why does this matter? Because the Mormons are "the" bankers of the religious right. Last fall, the Mormons dropped $20 million into California and singlehandedly turned a losing battle into the successful repeal of marriage rights for gay couples in that state. The Mormons have bankrolled hate initiatives in Alaska and Hawaii and across the northwest and midwest for the past decade. They are not some fringe "religion" to be shrugged off. The new anti-gay marriage coalition, National Organization for Marriage, keeps finding, seemingly out of nowhere, $1.5m for this ad campaign, then another $1.5m for that ad campaign. Where are they finding this sudden infusion of cash? Inquiring minds want to know.

The fact that the Mormons chose to forcibly convert the deceased mother of the President of the United States, only months before he was elected to office, is relevant to our discussion of the Mormon influence in American politics today. There is a larger pattern of bigotry that should concern us all. Has anyone noticed how all of their victims are minorities? The mother of a black president. The forced conversion of Jewish Holocaust victims. The history of racial animus towards African-Americans (and blacks more generally). And now the financing of religious right anti-gay hate.

Every one a minority. I'm sure it's just another rare mistake.

If the Mormons want to promote hate back in their own state, that's their affair. When they export it to the world, steal our dead, and try to weasel their way into the Obama administration by pushing for a place at the table overseeing the Faith Based Initiative, among other ventures, it's all of our business.