and so it begins...

CHURCH HISTORY Emmanuel Dunand, AFP / Getty Images

1. Romney Demanded Mom Give Up Baby

The conservative evangelicals in South Carolina are sure to be leery of Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, but after this, they may not be the only ones. The Real Romney, a new biography written by a pair of Boston Globe reporters, reveals that as a Mormon bishop in the 1980s, the GOP frontrunner demanded a single mom give up her baby for adoption or face excommunication from the church. “This is not playing around,” the woman said. “This is not like, ‘You don’t get to take Communion.’ This is like ‘You will not be saved. You will never see the face of God.’” The authors say that people are not often excommunicated from the LDS Church over such matters, and the woman had positive things to say about Romney outside his role in church leadership. But the woman left the church, and Romney denies the threats took place.