Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, is a Mormon. And it might cost him the election.

According to a Nov. 2006 Rasmussen poll, 43 percent of Americans would never consider voting for a Mormon candidate. Only 38 percent said they “would ever” consider casting a ballot for a Latter-day Saint. Time magazine gave Romney’s religion a 2,000-word story in an issue with his face on the cover. This focus on piety is especially striking considering the relative lack of controversy surrounding the first major female and black candidates.

A candidate’s specific religion hasn’t been such a big deal in presidential politics since 1960, when John F. Kennedy had to promise to a gathering of Southern Baptist leaders he would not be a puppet of the pope or, to coin a phrase, “popepet.” Romney will probably have to prove he is not a Mormon puppet, or “Muppet.”

Christians who judge Mormons by the actions of a minority of fundamentalist polygamists (a practice disavowed by the church and barred for more than 100 years) are wearing irony blinders. Just as there is a small number of Mormons who marry multiple wives in the supposed name of religion, so too do a small number of Protestants bomb abortion clinics. Wackjob extremist Christians – and for that matter, wackjob extremist Jews, wackjob extremist Muslims and even wackjob extremist Buddhists – are willing to kill in the name of their invisible man in the sky. Wackjob extremist Mormons mostly engage in the simple pursuit of nookie.

Think of how you cringe when someone commits some horrible and embarrassing act in the name of your religion; this is how Mormons feel when they hear in the news about some polygamist nut in a double-wide trailer in an especially rural area of the West.

Other Mormon practices deemed odd are not so strange when compared to more practiced religions. The temple garment, a one- or two-piece cotton underwear worn by observant adults, is substantially less constricting than religious vestments worn by some members of the Catholic sect Opus Dei (like the spiky metal “cilice” that causes intentional discomfort when wrapped around a worshipper’s thigh) and substantially less visible than the yarmulkes worn by observant Jewish males. It’s not my cup of tea – I like buying my underwear for a discount at Meijer, thank you very much – but there is no collateral effect on me when a Mormon friend shows up with a layer of religious clothing concealed by his outerwear.

Do you believe, as most Mormons do, that Joseph Smith found gold plates that only he could read, that American Indians are descended from two of the lost tribes of Israel, or that God has a real body of flesh and bones? I don’t. I also don’t believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, you get 72 virgins when you die, or that a spaceship following Comet Hale-Bopp will beam you up if you design Web sites and wear Nikes. If the stories of current major world religions were told to an independent, objective person previously unaware of the existence of religion, he would find them all to be of approximately equal plausibility, probably on par with the realism of “Star Trek.”

Judging a person for their religious label is a fool’s errand. Religious people tend to have their beliefs pounded into their heads from birth, and a 3-year-old in church is in no position to intellectually challenge what she’s being told by Mommy and Daddy or the man on the pulpit. Are all Mormons the same? Not any more than all Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Shintos or Zoroastrians. Not any more than all marathon runners, bakers, grandparents or college students.

If I consider a religion’s tenets particularly weird, I’d be far more wary of someone who converted as an adult – say, a fighter pilot/sports agent who believes an alien named Lord Xenu dropped the frozen souls of other aliens into Earth’s volcanoes and that somehow this is the reason humans are unhappy. (Note to Scientologists: L. Ron Hubbard was a brilliant visionary. Please don’t sue me.)

What matter are Romney’s moral compass, integrity and political stances. The name of his religion ranks on the relevance scale right between shoe size and haircut. If I don’t cast a vote for Romney next year, it won’t be because of his religion. It will be for his policies.