LAST THURSDAY the Boston Globe published an editorial regarding Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. It was, not surprisingly, far from complimentary: Romney is a conservative Republican and the Globe‘s opinion pages, are, in the words of their own ombudsperson Christine Chinlund, “liberal leaning.” The editorial took issue with Romney’s stance against gay marriage. In its course, the editorial offered this seeming non-sequitur regarding Romney’s position: “It is the kind of thinking that had some people attacking Romney on the basis of his religion (Romney is a Mormon) in his 1994 Senate bid–something this page deplored.”
For Bay Staters with long memories, the Globe‘s assertion that it had deplored the rampant Mormon baiting of the 1994 campaign was jarring and audaciously at odds with the facts.
Indicative of the Globe‘s coverage of the hard-fought 1994 Senate campaign between Romney and Ted Kennedy is an article that appeared in the July 16, 1994 edition, coauthored by then-Globe staffers Frank Phillips and Scott Lehigh. Romney at that time was embroiled in a mini-controversy regarding his opinion of homosexuality. Although opposed to gay marriage, Romney had repeatedly insisted that he was opposed to discrimination of any kind due to an individual’s sexual orientation. Four members of his congregation who had attended a church speech that he had given eight months earlier told the Globe that Romney had referred to homosexuality as “perverse.” Romney vehemently denied this charge.
In the course of covering this story, the Globe staffers and the editors supervising them felt it necessary to provide the paper’s readership with some background on the Mormon faith. To this end the Globe quoted prominent Boston gay activist Vin McCarthy, who offered the following assessment of Romney’s religion: “I have always found it a delicious irony that a church founded on polygamy is so sanctimonious about fornication and homosexuality.” This quote was followed by Phillips and Lehigh’s observation that “Until the early 1890s, Mormon Church members practiced polygamy.”
And that was that. At no point in the article did the Globe quote any experts on Mormonism to confirm whether the religion was indeed “founded on polygamy.” (It was not.) Nor did the Globe reporters take issue with McCarthy’s assertion; indeed, they merely amplified it. For a paper that now professes to have “deplored” the attacks on Romney’s religion, this was bizarre conduct indeed.
THE NON-SEQUITUR in last week’s editorial was sufficiently brazen and that it raised a lot of eyebrows amongst Massachusetts political observers. Some cynical analysts suggested that it constituted a threat of sorts: If Romney continued to take the national conservative lead on such hot button issues as gay marriage and embryonic cloning for stem cell research purposes, the Globe would not be above returning his religion to the forefront of the political discussion.
If the editorial was indeed a threat, the Globe made good on it this Sunday, with a lengthy, front-page profile of Governor Romney’s relationship with his late father, former Michigan governor and failed presidential candidate George Romney. Curiously, even though the article wasn’t on religion, it mentioned the term “Mormon” seven times (eight if you count the caption to the accompanying photo that also appeared on the Globe‘s front page).
The story offered a strange Mormon related non-sequitur of its own: “Romney, the youngest of four children who grew up in the well-to-[sic] Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, cuts a smoother style than his father, whose youth was spent in the dusty outback of Mexico, where some Mormons had fled in the late 1800s to avoid prosecution for polygamy.”
Sunday’s story also concluded with a strange coda, referring to Romney as a “Mormon stalwart.” For what it’s worth, according to a search of the Globe‘s online archives, none of the following phrases have appeared in the Globe since its archives begin in 1979: “Jewish stalwart;” “Catholic stalwart;” “Christian stalwart;” “Muslim stalwart;” “Hindu stalwart;” or “Buddhist stalwart.”
Mitt Romney has never discussed his religion in a political context, certainly not willingly. He has never made an issue of his faith as President Bush has or as Senator Kerry did when he recited his history as an altar boy.
All of which makes the Globe’s rediscovery of the governor’s religious affiliation after a blissful ten year absence of such conversations especially noxious.
Dean Barnett writes about politics and other matters at soxblog.com under his on-line pseudonym James Frederick Dwight. In 1994, he volunteered on Mitt Romney’s failed senatorial campaign.
