Catholics and evangelicals leap to Romney's defense

Catholics and evangelicals came to the LDS Church's and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's defense Wednesday, calling on the Rev. Al Sharpton to answer for suggesting Mormons don't believe in God.

"Extraordinarily bigoted" was how Romney described Sharpton's comment made during a debate on religion held Monday in New York City, where Sharpton said, "as for the one Mormon running for office, those that really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don't worry about that, that's a temporary situation."

The former Democratic presidential candidate spent Wednesday defending his remark. He told the Associated Press that he was not questioning Romney's belief in God but was attempting to contrast himself with the atheist author he was debating, Christopher Hitchens.

"What I said was that we would defeat him, meaning as a Republican," Sharpton told the wire service. "A Mormon, by definition, believes in God. They don't believe in God the way I do, but by definition, they believe in God."

Sharpton told CNN's Paula Zahn on Wednesday evening he was responding to Hitchens' claim that Mormons are an example of how religion promotes racism because the church had excluded blacks.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did not grant the priesthood to males of all races until 1978.

Sharpton said if Mormons did not in the past see blacks as equal, they're not "real worshippers of God because I do not believe God distinguishes between people. That is not bigotry. That's responding to their beliefs."

It was Hitchens who "attacked the Mormons," not him, Sharpton said. "I'm the one that belongs to a race that couldn't join the Mormons and I'm the one that's the bigot," he said, calling on Romney to explain his views on his church's position on blacks.

Romney, who would be the first member of the LDS Church to serve as president if his race for the White House is successful in 2008, responded earlier in the day to Sharpton on the MSNBC cable network news channel's "Morning Joe" program.

"I can only, hearing that statement, wonder whether there's not bigotry that still remains in America," Romney said, adding that most people "have no interest in applying a religious test or suggesting that God wants one faith or another to succeed in becoming the president."

Romney, who led Salt Lake's successful 2002 Winter Olympics before serving as governor of Massachusetts, called what Sharpton said an "extraordinarily bigoted kind of statement, and I find it really quite extraordinary."

A spokesman for the LDS Church, Scott Trotter, had little to say about Sharpton's comment. "It's just campaign rhetoric and we're referring everyone back to Romney," Trotter said.