The Boston Globe has never been much of a fan of Mitt Romney, and Alex Beam fervently hopes that everyone is as bigoted as he is.

Can a Mormon be elected president in 2008? No.

His reason? Mormons believe "weird things". He figures Frontline's upcoming piece on the Mormons is going to be a problem as Americans discover the Mormons.

What does it all mean? PBS claims it has 75 million viewers a week. Let's say one-tenth -- no, one-twentieth -- of that audience watches "The Mormons." That's almost 4 million men and women who will know more about the Mormon faith than Romney might wish them to know. It's bad math for the Mittster.

Beam seems unaware that extensive coverage of the Mormons is rather routine. In 1997, Time magazine did a cover and an extensive piece on the Mormons. Newsweek did the same in 2004, and in both cases there was the inevitable discussion of distinctive Mormon faith-claims.

Let's be clear about this--Mormonism is a religion, not the Optimist club. You join the Mormon church for transcendental reasons; reasons godless liberals make fun of--like belief in God, absolute truth, etc...

Contrary to the implication, the LDS (Latter-day Saints) church doesn't shy away from such coverage, they welcome it. They have a very experienced and professional public relations department. The send tens of thousands of young men, young woman and retired couples all over the world to talk about the religion, support local congregations and engage in charitable works. You've seen their advertisements on television, you probably have a Mormon neighbor--its not like their hiding in caves or anything.

What is really happening at the moment is that the liberal-left is belatedly expressing an interest into something they've long ignored. They figure because they don't know what a Mormon is, neither do you--rather silly considering that the Mormons have been working the room for 180 years.

The fact is that the "weirdness" has great shock value, generating interest in the church that would be very hard to get any other way. When I travel and people hear I'm from Utah, I inevitably get all sorts of questions about "my wives". When was the last time somebody asked about your Methodist beliefs? Yeah, I though so.

What Beam doesn't realize is that unless he and his anti-Mitt crew can define him by the weirdness, all they are doing is generating a lot of interest in his campaign.

There is really only one constituency at this point that Romney has to worry about when it comes to his Mormonism, and that's the Evangelicals. Not surprisingly, they know quite a lot about alleged Mormon weirdness (which is weird only that its dissimilar from your particular religious weirdness...). Yet even though the theological differences are severe, almost every Evangelical apologetic starts with an acknowledgment that Mormons are good people, that they share an identical value system.

Bill Clinton is a Southern Baptist, and one assumes that he accepts their confession of faith--nevertheless, in 1999, the Southern Baptist Convention condemned him for establish gay and lesbian pride month and nominating a gay man as ambassador to Luxembourg. Does Clinton's orthodoxy trump his contrary values?

I seriously doubt it.