Mormon Elders Just Want People To Believe They're Just Like Everyone Else... But With Spinach In Their Teeth

A large, wealthy, virulently anti-gay family, which owns a chain of health food stores north of L.A., Lassen's, recently bought out the lease of Nature Mart, in my neighborhood. Nature Mart had been part of the community for over three decades. The community-- Los Feliz, Silverlake, Atwater-- is one of the most gay-friendly communities in the United States. Its one health food is now owned by a family that helped finance the anti-gay fight against Prop 8 and calls people who take umbrage to that "mean" and bigoted. If gay people and their allies want to defend themselves from actual bigots and haters like the Lassen family, they are the bigots. That's what you get from watching too much Fox News and listening to too much hate talk radio. And that's why a growing number of people are shopping elsewhere, driving to Trader Joe's or schlepping all the way to Erewhon, to avoid spending money that will go to stoke the Lassen family obsessive hatred for gay people.

The Lassens try to explain their bigotry as part of their Mormon religion. And, although the Mormon Church did call the faithful for a jihad against gays as part of their hope to win acceptance from the evangelical right that has always victimized Mormons, many Mormons, especially in Los Angeles, have recognized the cruel absurdity of Mormons making common cause with their own oppressors. The Lassens are not that enlightened. But the Mormon Church is growing increasingly concerned about their new image as a hate group. Mormon elders-- perhaps at the behest of allies of Bishop Willard "Mitt" Romney-- hired major advertising agencies Ogilvy & Mather and Hall & Partners to find out what normal Americans think about their organization. The results weren't pretty.

Using focus groups and surveys, they found that Americans who had any opinion at all used adjectives that were downright negative: “secretive,” “cultish,” “sexist,” “controlling,” “pushy,” “anti-gay.”

On seeing these results, some of those watching the presentation booed while others laughed, according to people at the meetings. But then they were told that the church was ready with a response: a multimillion-dollar television, billboard and Internet advertising campaign that uses the tagline, “I’m a Mormon.” The campaign, which began last year but was recently extended to 21 media markets, features the personal stories of members who defy stereotyping, including a Hawaiian longboard surfing champion, a fashion designer and single father in New York City and a Haitian-American woman who is mayor of a small Utah city.

“We’re not secretive,” Stephen B. Allen, managing director of the church’s missionary department, who is in charge of the campaign, said in an interview. “And we’re not scared of what people think of us. If you don’t recognize the problem, you can’t solve the problem. If nobody tells you you have spinach in your teeth, how would you know?”

Church leaders like Mr. Allen say that the timing and tenor of the campaign have nothing to do with the political campaigns of two Mormons running for president: Mitt Romney, the putative front-runner, and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., both former Republican governors. To avoid the perception that it was trying to influence politics, the church is intentionally not airing the campaign in states that have early primaries, going so far as to cancel their advertising in Las Vegas when Nevada moved up its primary, said Mr. Allen.

And yet, the church’s campaign could prove to be a pivotal factor in the race for the presidency. The Mormon image problem is a problem not only for the church, but also for Mr. Romney. For all their success professionally and financially, Mormons still face a level of religious bigotry in the United States equal only to that faced by Muslims.

Mormons make up less than 2 percent of the American population; the church says it has six million members in this country out of 14 million worldwide. They believe in Jesus Christ, read the Bible and consider themselves Christian, but their theology differs significantly from traditional Christianity. They claim three additional books of scripture, including the Book of Mormon. They believe that the prophet Joseph Smith, who founded the church in 1830, restored Christianity to its true path.

Polls taken during the last presidential race showed that 4 in 10 Americans said they would not vote for a Mormon for president. While some more recent polls have shown a slight softening of attitudes, a Mormon candidate still has a huge hurdle to overcome. If the church’s upbeat advertising campaign succeeds in warming public perceptions of Mormons, then a campaign intended to sell the church could also help sell a president.
The highly negative poll numbers that surfaced in the first Romney campaign were deeply disturbing to the church’s top leadership, according to people involved with the church’s advertising campaign who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize their jobs. Church leaders were also taken aback by the vitriol directed at Mormons after the church contributed money and volunteers to pass Proposition 8, the California measure in 2008 that banned same-sex marriage.