Wait a minute.
Sounds to me, Sherman that you're in favor of adding more qualifiers 'tween religious groups, right?
Yet are you consistent? (Do you do that when Mormons regularly claim to be "Christian" minus few if any qualifiers?)
MAINSTREAM Mormons can apparently...
(1) Baptize the dead...including Jews...
(2) Seal the dead in a marital union they NEVER had on earth (For example, see how Lds "married" this deceased Roman Catholic priest to a woman in their vital records: Mormons even marry the dead by proxy (Vanity: The OTHER World Series)) [Citation: According to research provided by Helen Radkey into the LDS Church's FamilySearch database, it indicated that Belgium-born Damien “was baptized by proxy, given his ‘endowments’ and sealed to his parents for eternity Oct. 22, 1983, in the Los Angeles Temple. More recently, Damien was sealed to a wife, which Radkey calls ‘bogus,’ on March 15, 2000, at the Jordan River Temple in South Jordan.” (Salt Lake Tribune, “Newest Catholic saint baptized and 'sealed' to wife in LDS temple?" Oct. 13, 2009)]
(3) Wear supposedly magically "protective" underwear...
(4) Say that our Father-God rose up to the "god ranks" via manhood before being selected by a "council of gods" to be our god...
(5) Fail to harangue Brigham Young for teaching both Adam=God and self-bled blood atonement...instead honoring him by naming their most prominent university system after him...
And a whole host of other UNChristian things...
...and few FREEPERs will call mainstream Mormons on the carpet for saying, "We're Christians, too..."
[IOW, if THEY are Christians, too, then all of the above -- and more -- gets lumped together and linked in as representing what we Christians believe and act upon as well]...
...YET you find it somehow offensive that there's Mormon overlaps between what the mainstreamers were practicing into the early 1900s and their spiritual descendents are practicing now???
May I remind you that there's STILL a LOT of close enough theological connections 'tween the fLDS and the LDS re: what they believe???
If LDS Mormon = "Christian"...
...Given that mainstream Mormons are further from Christianity than fLDSism is from LDSism...
...And furthermore, if groups can claim their own turf -- meaning if LDS can claim to BE "Christian" --then why can't fLDS on those same grounds claim to be "Mormon"???
Well, the way I see it then...
...is that the fLDS have no less claim on calling themselves "Christians" than the LDS do...right, Sherman???
A 'Christian'-is-a-Mormon-is a fundamentalist Mormon-is-a-'Christian'...??? All in one loop...???
Those who claim that Christians cannot set "Christian umbrella" boundaries between them and Mormonism are on thin ice turning around and attempting to draw "Mormon umbrella" boundaries 'tween various Mormon groups.
You forgot to post my little couplet:
As the fLDS now are, the LDS once were.
As the fLDS now are, the LDS may become.