Polygamist Family Haunts White House Hopeful

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who is running for next year's Republican presidential nomination, is struggling to deflect concerns about his Mormon religion with renewed media attention focusing on the polygamist behaviour of his forebears.

According to Associated Press, polygamy was not a footnote in his family tree but a "prominent element".

The agency investigated genealogical records which show that two of Mr Romney's great-great grandfathers, Parley Pratt and Miles Romney, had 12 wives each. One of the latter's children, Miles Park Romney, had five wives, the first of whom had 11 children including the former governor's grandfather, Gaskell. The family's connections with polygamy stopped there, though Gaskell was brought up in Mexico where the family had fled to escape US laws against "unlawful cohabitation".

The news of Mr Romney's bid to run earlier this month was met by a barrage of media comment. Time magazine asked "Can a Mormon be president?" Among the potential difficulties he faces with voters are the beliefs of the Mormon founder, Joseph Smith, who claimed to have been handed the true words of God in a golden tablet and that Jesus would return to reign on Earth from Missouri. Smith branded all previous forms of Christianity an abomination, which may cause Mr Romney some difficulty with southern evangelicals.

He may also come under pressure to explain why anyone with African blood was barred from the Mormon priesthood - a lay form of church leadership to which Mr Romney himself has belonged - until 1978.

But the most potentially damaging aspect of Mormonism is its polygamist past, which the church has laboured to disassociate itself from for more than a century. In 1890 Mormon leaders issued a "manifesto" in which pluralism was denounced in exchange for their home territory of Utah being turned into a state.

However, article 132 of the church's doctrine still includes Smith's revelation that God authorised polygamy.

Mr Romney has joked about polygamy, saying that to him, "marriage is between a man and a woman ... and a woman and a woman" But in serious moments he has called the practice "bizarre" and noted his church excommunicates those who engage in it.