Is it Open Season on Mormonism?

The BuzzFeed piece is misleadingly titled,”Why Ann stayed home.” In fact the reporter, McKay Coppins (who has identified himself as a Mormon), reveals nothing about her motivations. That, rather, appears to be the “hook” for a discourse asserting the Mormon faith is discriminatory and oppressive toward women. Ann wasn’t interviewed. The Romney campaign didn’t comment for his report. And the reporter doesn’t indicate he tried to reach either. The piece foreshadows, I fear, of what is to come — effort to portray Mormons as weirdly out of step and unmodern, and by implication, Romney as being unfit for the presidency.

The premise of the piece, that Mormonism was the motivation for Ann Romney’s decision to stay home, is defeated in the first graph: “Ann Romney was already fully immersed in stay-at-home motherhood — raising five sons, ages six to 16, in her Belmont home — when Mormon prophet Ezra Taft Benson took to a pulpit on February 22, 1987 and delivered a definitive sermon on gender roles in the church titled, “To the Mothers of Zion.” (Emphasis added.) The reporter also cites a Mormon speech lauding motherhood from the late 1970s, after the birth of several of the Romney boys.