Response to "Mormon voters wary of showing too much love for Romney"

I'm making a comeback on my blog. This is a shout out to all of my friends, LDS or not, who have their own political leanings, influenced by their surroundings and life experiences of course, but that are uniquely theirs. Here is my response to a Washington Post article I read this morning: Mormon voters wary of showing too much love for Romney 

I was surprised by the statement: "Mormons, one of Romney’s most loyal voting blocs, are often quiet about their support. That might be because the church discourages political involvement."

While the LDS Church as a whole does not endorse any particular political party, it reserves its right to become involved in specific political issues -- hence its involvement in Proposition 8 in California. But it is not as commonly known that the church also supported Utah HB 116 a not-so-conservative guest-worker program for illegal immigrants.

The church actively encourages its members to be politically involved but does not prescribe with what political party members must be involved. In fact, Utah was predominately Democratic from the 1880s to 1970s when disagreement over the Equal Rights Amendment weakened party alliances. This decrease in the Democratic Party in Utah specifically, which occurred concurrently with a decrease in the Mormon proportion of the Utah population, and among Mormons generally continued through the 1980s and 1990s until today when Democrats make up a small minority of voters in Utah. Although it is important to point out that there are still several Mormon politicians who have maintained their alliance with the Democratic Party including Representative Jim Matheson and his father, former Utah governor Scott Matheson.

While there may be more Republican Mormon voters than Democratic Mormon voters, it cannot be ignored that Harry Reid, one of the most powerful Democratic political leaders in our country, is Mormon. And he is not the only Mormon Democrat. Brigham Young University (BYU), the university owned the LDS Church, has had several political speakers at campus-wide events and graduation ceremonies including Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney, but also Harry Reid and Joseph Lieberman.

It appears that some want to paint the LDS Church in an extreme light but the issue of political involvement and political parties among Mormons, as with most political issues, is more complicated.