First, let me say upfront that I believe most Democrats, just like most Republicans either have no issue with Mormons or are totally indifferent. (Which works out to be essentially the same thing.)
However, I wanted to chime in with my own point of view on this.
First, the politically liberal Mormons making comments have no issue admitting that some democrats dislike or even hate Mormons. So this seems to be a ‘fact’ for our purposes.
One argument that has come up several times now though is that some Democrats, while willing to use Romney’s Mormonism as a weapon against him for political reasons, have no issue with liberal Mormons like Harry Reid. I, for one, have no argument with this. So we’ll take this as a ‘fact’ as well.
The argument seems to be that this is some how not as bad as what the Republicans are doing since Republicans that hate Mormons hate them even though they politically agree. Thus, so goes the argument, it’s really about politics for liberals and Democrats and not about religion. Again, no contention from me. So we’ll take this as a fact as well.
Now here is my questions that I’ve been mulling over in my mind. Suppose there was someone that was strongly politically opposed to Barrack Obama (who I voted for, btw). Suppose that they were ‘not prejudice against African Americans.’ Suppose that we even had strong evidence of this: namely that they loved Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain, etc. They wouldn’t in a million years dare to make any sort of racial remark about them and they get angry if someone else does.
But suppose that this person hated Barrack Obama’s politics so much that they felt beating Barrack Obama was their top priority. And suppose that this person had strong reason to believe that calling attention to Obama’s race would be an effective deterrent for some people (not him) not voting for Obama that might have otherwise voted for him.
So this person starts to call into question Obama’s competence because he’s African American. And he makes racial slurs, etc. But the fact is, he’s really only doing it for political reasons.
Is this hypothetical person not a bigot? Are they better than or worse than a ‘real bigot’ in your mind?