Excerpts from USA Today earlier this year (February)
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Until 1978, the LDS church banned men of African descent from its priesthood, a position open to nearly all Mormon males and the gateway to sacramental and leadership roles. The church had also barred black men and women from temple ceremonies that promised access in the afterlife to the highest heaven.
As he explored joining the church in 1988, Perkins said he asked Mormons near his Los Angeles home about the racial doctrines. They gently explained that blacks were the cursed descendants of Cain, the biblical murderer, he recalls.
"Let's say you have this powerful witness of God telling you that this church is truly of him," said the 48-year-old salesman and video producer. "And then the people in that church lovingly tell you that you are cursed. How do you reconcile those two things?"
Perkins says Mormon leaders couldn't offer an answer.
The LDS church has neither formally apologized for the priesthood ban nor publicly repudiated many of the theories used to justify it for more than 125 years.
Perkins and other black Mormons say the church's silence not only irks many African-Americans, it could also become a loud distraction for the nation's most prominent Mormon: Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination.
"Right now is a great opportunity for the church to say, 'Let's clear the air once and for all,'" said Darron Smith, co-editor of the book "Black and Mormon" and a sociologist at Wichita State University in Kansas.
"But they won't do it. And that's going to put reasonable doubt in people's minds about Romney and the church."
Questions about Mormonism's racial history also arose during Romney's first White House run.
In a 2007 Meet the Press interview, Tim Russert noted that Romney was 31 when the priesthood ban was lifted in 1978. "Didn't you think, 'What am I doing part of an organization that is viewed by many as a racist organization?'" Russert asked.
"I'm very proud of my faith, and it's the faith of my fathers," Romney answered. "And I'm not going to distance myself from my faith in any way."
But Romney also said that he had been "anxious to see a change in my church" and recalled weeping when he heard that the ban had been lifted.
"Even at this day it's emotional, and so it's very deep and fundamental in my life and my most core beliefs that all people are children of God," Romney said.
Pressed by Russert, Romney refused to say his church was wrong to restrict blacks from full participation.
Romney's forebears were among the original Mormon converts in the 1830s, and Romney himself was a bishop in the church before he entered politics in 1994.
"For men like Romney, lifelong church members whose people were pioneers in the faith, to criticize church authority would be akin to heresy," said Smith.
Romney's father, George Romney, also faced criticism over the priesthood ban when he ran for president in 1968. He answered by extolling his civil rights record as governor of Michigan.
George Romney, like his son, refused to publicly criticize his church.
"The issue hurt him and it hurt the image of Mormon church," said Newell Bringhurst, a historian and co-author of The Mormon Quest for the Presidency.
It may mar Mitt Romney's campaign too, Bringhurst said. "He'll face more and more scrutiny on the Mormon-black issue, even though the church has abandoned the policy."
Smith was more blunt.
"The church has never done its due diligence, and guess what? Mitt Romney is taking hell for it."
"We just got that one wrong"
Purdy said LDS leaders began seeking divine guidance about the black ban in the 1970s. In 1978, he said, "a revelation to the church's prophet extended the blessings of the priesthood to all worthy members."