Since the beginning Mormons, who have generally been viewed unfavorably by any press but their own, have cried religious bigotry to those who take issue with their religion. I say that it is time for bigotry to be redefined. Discrimination is a term that has come to have a pejorative meaning. This is understandable when applied to prejudice against those who cannot help their status because it is a function of birth or misfortune: race, gender, or disability. These conditions are not a choice; becoming or staying a Mormon is. However, one who discriminates (and I use this in the pure sense of the word) should be allowed to question and even reject an entire belief system when that system encompasses prejudicial discrimination against protected classes.
The Caucasian male, the archetype of LDS rulers, rejects the dark-skinned and female as equals. It's difficult to maintain a credible claim of religious bigotry when Mormonism's theology encompasses both gender and racial prejudice. To reject a belief system which, in and of itself embraces gender and racial bigotry, is not religious bigotry, it is common sense egalitarianism. Unfortunately, only the most enlightened of our species appears to have any interest in this way of thinking.
So to the Mormon claim of religious intolerance I say yes—I am intolerant of your historic and current discrimination against blacks, Native Americans and women. And I am even more intolerant of your attempts to cover-up and now claim that these sorts of bigoted views ever existed in your theology.
As for Mitt Romney—while it is clear that there can be no religious test for public office, it is also clear that one can examine a candidate’s integrity. And here is the bite, Mitt, if you associate and stand by Mormonism you are a dupe, because intelligent people know that the religion is a fraud. Conversely, if you know what we all know (and I suspect that you do) then you are a deceiver, because you continue to belong to, and have previously led, a group of religionists whose changing theology is based in lies and deception under the euphemism of continuing revelation. No person of integrity, knowing the true foundation of this cult, and the extraordinary ignorance it breeds in its members, can or should continue on in association with it. To do so is duplicitous to the core and certainly not a character trait that I want in my commander in chief.
