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Last night, I was reading through articles about Mitt Romney that had been posted on the Internet, and I came across one that I knew wasn’t going to be pretty, “Scoop: Bishop Romney’s Sadistic Anti-Abortion Counseling.” I debated whether I should read it or not (I usually try not to read stuff that I know beforehand will make me mad and upset, because I figure there’s enough stress in the world without voluntarily adding to it). I finally decided I oughta read it, (need to keep track of the enemy’s writings and all that), and so I read through the whole thing. The very first line was a quote from a book whose title was, “Polygamy or the Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism.” That almost made me change my mind because I knew it was about to get downright mean and nasty.

Which it promptly did.

In mainstream media, the authors of AP pieces at least try to put up an appearance of “I’m completely unbiased - nothing but the facts, ma’am!” but with this article, it did not even attempt that, nor (based on the other articles posted on this site) is that something that they strive for on this website in the slightest. The name is “Scoop,” and their tagline is, “Independent News.” After reading this article and the small bio posted at the end of it about the author, I would have to change that tagline to, “Extreme obsession and hatred towards the LDS Church, polygamy, Mitt Romney, and conservatives.”

Now, in case y’all missed my previous posts on this subject, I am LDS. In fact, I’m a very active LDS member. Although the world seems to be obsessed with the LDS Church’s ties with polygamy, I have to say: I am not related to, nor do I know - even in passing - a single person who has been involved in polygamy, at all. I go to church each Sunday. I can count. I would notice if there were two wives and one husband, I assure you. It just isn’t happening. In the article, the woman being interviewed (who claims to be Mormon but based on the various statements she made during the interview, I would have to strongly, strongly question that claim,) said, “I’m also bothered by the fact that the church has said it excommunicates people who practice polygamy, but the fact is that only a small percentage have been excommunicated. Some practice it right under the nose of the church and no one investigates that.”

Absolutely not true. A bishop can count. A stake president can count. A ward member can count. I guarantee you that if a guy started showing up to church with a lady on each arm, some serious cain would be raised. If it was found that they were married together in one happy triage (and not just some old buddies getting together after a class reunion or something), they would all be excommunicated as quickly as humanly possible. I would be willing to stake everything I own on that statement. The Church is absolutely in no way “looking the other way” when it comes to polygamy. It has been renounced, and all Church members found practicing it are excommunicated, no ifs, ands, or buts whatsoever.

You’ll find that if you look at polygamy stories unfolding in the news today, every story is talking about people who are members of a branch off of the LDS Church - the Reformed LDS Church or whatever else they want to call themselves (there are multiple small breaks off from the LDS Church operating under different names.) They are not recognized by the Church, and they definitely don’t have anything to do with the Church in any capacity - it is the equivalent of the members of the Baptist Church and the Catholic Church being mixed up and labeled as belonging to the same church. I think members of both congregations would strenuously argue against that if it happened. That’s exactly how I feel about being mixed up or compared to members of break away Mormon churches. They are not members of my church, and I do not believe the same things they do. End of story.

Speaking of stories, this is where the Mitt Romney tie comes in - a real whopper of a story was told, and I’m about to show what a pot of bull it really was. The lady being interviewed, Judy Dushku, says that she is feminist Democrat who is a member of the LDS Church. She says that in the ’70s, Mitt Romney was not her bishop (the bishop is basically the pastor of the congregation) but was a bishop of a nearby congregation. She says that Mitt gave “sadistic” counsel to a pregnant woman. Talk about writing with a slant. Sheesh. You can read the story in full, then see my comments below:

Judy Dushku: It was in the late 1970s. She was a woman about 40 years old, 3 ½ to 4 months into her sixth pregnancy. We’ll call her woman “X”. She was an active member of the ward where Romney was bishop in Massachusetts, at that time in a neighboring community where I was not a member. The stake president was a doctor named Gordon and was an old friend of X.

X and her husband went to the hospital because she had an aching in her leg. Her doctor was alarmed after examining her, telling her she had developed blood clots and could not carry the pregnancy to full term. He said they’d have to give her blood thinners in order to get rid of the clots and that they would endanger the baby.

X had lost her first baby; the child was born with many physical problems and died at two or three weeks old. X was already the mother of four teenage children. This would have been her sixth.

Suzan Mazur: And X and her husband decided they would abort the child because her life was in danger.

Judy Dushku: Yes.

Suzan Mazur: And she advised her bishop – Mitt Romney – that she was going to terminate the pregnancy for medical reasons. And what did he say?

Judy Dushku: First of all the stake president – Gordon – came by to see X with a friend and said well it looks like you have to do this – terminate the pregnancy. He was perfectly comfortable with X’s decision, since both she and the child were in peril. And Gordon was technically higher in the LDS church hierarchy than Mitt was as bishop.

So then Mitt came in to the hospital. X thought Mitt had come to be comforting because that’s what bishops do. They have a pastoral role. But she said that instead he was critical.

He said – What do you think you’re doing?

She said – Well, we have to abort the baby because I have these blood clots.

And he said something to the effect of – Well, why do you get off easy when other women have their babies?

And she said – What are you talking about? This is a life threatening situation.

And he said – Well what about the life of the baby?

And she said – I have four other children and I think it would be really irresponsible to continue the pregnancy.

X said she found herself arguing with Romney about her medical crisis, said he was very unsympathetic, very critical, and said that under the circumstances in no way did he condone her aborting the child. And he left.

She was extremely distraught. Talked it over with her husband. They decided to go ahead with the abortion. After that she left the church.

Suzan Mazur: She’s okay now?

Judy Dushku: Yes.

Suzan Mazur: And you then confronted Romney over the matter.

Judy Dushku: In the early 90s, our feminist newspaper Exponent II, did a theme issue about Mormonism and abortion. X said she’d like to write a piece describing her experience. We agreed to publish her story anonymously because we knew her and knew about the ordeal.

It goes on from there, but that was the important part. First off, look at the dates: Late 1970’s. That was 30 years ago. You cannot possibly convince me now or ever that someone’s remembrance of an event in 30 years wouldn’t have changed at all. It’s not like this story was broken to the press days after it happened - this is 30 years later. Memories change, develop, fade, etc, a whole lot happens in 30 years.

Leaving that aside for a moment, let’s consider the fact that this is sheer and complete heresy. We don’t have the woman’s statements. We don’t even have the woman’s name. We have “Woman X” who went through something, then 15 years later told the story to Judy who published it in a magazine, and then 15 years after that, Judy is telling the story to the interviewer without the use of notes or anything else (she said to the interviewer, “And he said something to the effect of” which means she was paraphrasing - remembering - which means she didn’t have her article in front of her to be able to quote exactly) and then we’ve got the interviewer herself who is actually telling you and I the story that Judy told her that Woman X told Judy.

Incredible.

For all we know, the lady got the sniffles and went to the hospital over it, and Mitt Romney came and gave her a bouquet of flowers.

Has anyone ever played “Telephone” where something is whispered to a person on one side of the room and then it is passed from person to person until they get to the end, and you find out that “A silly monkey ate bananas” became “The courthouse caught on fire last week”? There is a sound logical reason for heresy not to be admissible in court: Because it is not accurate. You cannot question the person who originally made the statement, to make sure they were telling the truth. Not only can we not question the lady, we don’t even get to know the lady’s name. Judy could be making this up out of thin air. We have no way of knowing.

But let’s pretend, just for a moment, that this story is actually true, that what the interviewer says Judy says Woman X says Mitt said really was said. Just for kicks and grins. If it was, then Woman X would have gone to the stake president and said, “After you left, Bishop Romney came in, and he was horrible to me! He said this and this and this.” The stake president would have pulled Romney into his office and confirmed the veracity of the story. Supposedly the husband is on all of this, so he too would be able to confirm what The Horrible Mitt said. At that point, Mitt would have been under a lot of condemnation for his treatment of this member of his ward. He might have even gotten released as bishop of the ward over it. This caused a lady, her husband, and their four children to forever drop away from the Church. It would not have been glossed over or taken lightly.

Instead, let’s look at what really happened. Instead of being released from office of bishop or being put on some sort of probation from the Church (which if he had been, you can bet your bottom dollar, Judy, who had a very large axe to grind with Mitt, would have pointed that out with great glee in this article) he was instead released as bishop of the ward so that he could be called to serve as stake president, which as Judy pointed out, is over the bishop - the stake president is basically over (or the boss of) all of the bishops in an area. He’s the pastor’s boss. You don’t get called and sustained to the position of a stake president if you’re under suspension or if your conduct as a bishop had been highly contended and railed against. In layman’s terms, he got promoted, not demoted.

What she’s saying happened just doesn’t make any sense, and IMHO, simply couldn’t have happened. The Church has a very simple and direct view on abortion: It should not happen unless it was caused by rape or incest, or unless the life of the mother is at stake. If one of these three simple reasons is at play in a pregnancy, the Church not only allows or approves for an abortion to take place, but if the circumstances warrant it (financially) the Church will even help pay for that abortion to happen. Mitt is a smart guy. I don’t think even the people who hate his guts and would spit in his face if they met him would contest that. He can read. He knew the Church’s policy on abortion. He never would have said something as stupid as, “Why do you get off easy when other women have their babies?” when the woman could have died from having the baby. That simply makes no sense.

And when it all comes down to it, that sums this article up in a nutshell: It makes no sense. There were other glaring inaccuracies in the interview (check out the link for the whole article), like when the interviewer said, “What’s your feeling about LDS church scripture still advocating polygamy, specifically the Book of Mormon Doctrine & Covenants, section 132?”

Umm…Note to interviewer: In case you didn’t know (and considering the fact that you were quoting so many other “facts” about the LDS Church and setting yourself up as a Mormon expert, you really ought to have known this) the Book of Mormon is a completely separate book from the Doctrine & Convenants. It’s the equivalent of saying, “Matthew 1 Corinthians 7:5.” Matthew is a book. 1 Corinthians is a book. They are not the same book. The fact that the author doesn’t even know that the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine & Covenants aren’t the same book makes me really question her knowledge of the LDS religion, and the veracity of the other statements she made about the Church.

Speaking of questioning, not only does she misquote the reference to the scripture and combine two books into one, she also says that LDS scripture is still advocating polygamy, then proceeds to quote the scripture. That’s bull, plain and simple. Just like the Christian faith does not go through the Bible and say, “Sacrifice of animals no longer needs to be done, so we’re going to strip out every reference to sacrifices made by Adam on down,” the LDS Church is not going to go through the scriptures and pull out the very few references that are in it to polygamy. The revelation was given then, it was applicable then, it isn’t applicable now, but the revelation was still a revelation back then, so it needs to stay. I know that many of my readers may not agree that it was a revelation - if you’re not LDS, I’m not saying you have to agree that it was a revelation. We can agree to disagree on that point. BUT! Do understand that just because doctrine changes and grows throughout time, doesn’t mean that all old doctrine must deleted and pulled out completely. David in the Old Testament had many wives. I don’t see anyone calling for that to be removed from the Bible. We no longer believe in “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” philosophy either, but that doesn’t mean anyone is rearranging the Old Testament.

On so many levels, this article is wrong, it lies, and it is misleading. The reason I took so much time to write all of this out was because I think that this is just a harbinger of what is to come. We may not see this extreme or open of a bias from the mainstream media, but in many small ways, it is still there. It is easier to see the bias when the author seems to openly admit to it without reserve, but this actually makes it easier to fight against. It’s when the articles are twisted just slightly, the tone just a little off, the quotes not being taken equally from both sides, that the fight gets harder to win. We’ve got another year and a half of this kind of crap to survive through, and if we succeed and Mitt wins, then we have at least another four years on top of that to survive through. It’s gonna be tough, but I think very, very worth it.

Mitt is the best leader we could ask for, for the crisis that we are living through right now. America needs Mitt - the world needs Mitt. I know that he will do so much for America, and I’m excited - horrible journalism in the offing or not - to see it happen.

Leave your thoughts below - I would love to hear them.

Hava

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