Reporting from Carrollton, Arkansas, the Washington Post finds some locals still upset with actions of a “Mormon militia” over 150 years ago. The Post reports:
Many of the locals grew up hearing denunciations of Mormonism from the pulpit on Sundays, and tales of the massacre from older relatives who considered Mormons “evil.”
But the main concern of the paper is … will this hurt Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney?
The article, headlined “Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith tangles with a quirk of Arkansas history,” attacks Romney for being a Mormon, because, according to the paper, his coreligionists and ancestors were responsible for “the first 9/11.”
And yet, there is scant evidence that Romney’s religion is making much difference in how voters here are thinking about the presidential election and whether they are willing to back the former Massachusetts governor.
Keep in mind: Romney is 65. He was not a part of or responsible for the massacre in any way. Nevertheless, the Post justifies its publication of the story by writing, “Still, Romney’s candidacy has prompted some soul-searching in this area, where a historical group estimates that more than half the residents can trace their ancestry back to the wagon train.”
And everyone (even Romney!) already apologized for the massacre, anyway.
“That was a terrible, awful act carried out by members of my faith,” he told the Associated Press. “There are bad people in any church, and it’s true of members of my church, too.”
So in case one thought otherwise, Romney is not in favor of massacres. (Hmm. Not like the Post might have been suggesting otherwise!)
Only halfway through the article do we learn that it was actually the Mormons who generally faced persecution. “The massacre was an anomaly for the church, because it was Mormons who were more likely to be targeted in the early days of their religion, which was founded in the 1830s and 1840s,” the paper concedes. “Mormons had been attacked by mobs and forcibly ejected from states.”
