Great Grand Daughter of Brigham Young on Mormonism and Mitt
There’s an interesting article in the dailybeast that I found by way of this diary over on dailykos. In the article, the great grand daughter of Brigham Young gives some insights into Mormonism and more importantly Mitt Romney, some excerpts below, the full article is here.
Emmett has watched Mitt Romney very closely throughout his public life and has strong opinions about what shaped his personality and his character. ‘Mitt is a product not only of his wealth, but of an organization that gives men power when they are 12 years old,’ she says. ‘That is when boys are ordained with the priesthood. It is a big moment in a Mormon male’s childhood.’
As for what pundits say is Romney’s difficulty connecting with people, Emmett blames it largely on what she calls ‘the entitled Mormon male syndrome, where the leadership professes compassion and concern but leaves the manifestations of that to the drones. All male leadership is not this way; there are some wonderful men who do their best to exercise their power compassionately, but many do not.’
Emmett says Romney was a bishop, ‘a position where everyone defers to you. What a bishop says goes. People come to them to receive blessings.’ He then became a stake president, she says, which means he presided over several congregations, and at that point bishops deferred to him.
‘Mitt has had people defer to him and not challenge him his entire life,’ says Emmett. ‘In the Mormon church if you challenge your priesthood leaders it’s a very bad thing to do, especially for women. As the world can now see, Mitt has a very hard time with being questioned and criticized; he’s had so little of this in his life.”
Will he be more beholden to his church than to the American people? Emmett recalls that when Romney was stake president in the church, he was pro-life. But when he was running for governor he changed his position to pro-choice. A woman in the church who was a good friend of Emmett’s went to see Romney and thanked him for changing his position. ‘He told her that he had talked to church leaders in Salt Lake,’ Emmett says, ‘and that they gave him permission to change his position.’