He was speaking specifically about bigotry against the LDS Church and the negative discourse about Mormons amplified by Mitt Romney's bid for the presidency.

Hatch's plea to the newspaper editors was nothing new. He has often expressed concern about the mud unfairly thrown at Mormons from all directions - whether from faith-based conservative Republicans or from secular liberal Democrats.

Hatch told me in an interview Thursday that one reason he brought it up again last week was the latest salvo launched against his faith - a mass distribution of anti-Mormon DVDs throughout the U.S. and Canada that alleges The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a non-Christian cult.

"I've been putting up with prejudice against the LDS Church my whole Senate career," Hatch said. "(Religious) bigotry should not exist at the level of (a presidential campaign)."

But the source of Hatch's angst is an influential faction of his own Republican Party: The fundamentalist Christian right wing that has become a powerful political action group.

Those claiming responsibility for the DVD identify themselves as "traditional Christians." Most political analysts consistently cite Romney's religion as his biggest hurdle to gaining the Republican nomination because of these fundamentalist Christian attitudes.

When the Southern Baptist Convention held its 1998 international convention in Salt Lake City, the Rev. Paige Patterson, then president of the convention, publicly denounced various Mormon beliefs while his missionaries knocked on doors trying to find converts among the LDS faithful.

Hatch said the anti-Mormon sentiment comes from Democrats too - and he is right, particularly here in Utah. But remember, Romney was elected governor of one of the most liberal, Catholic states in the country. And when his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, ran for president in 1968, his Mormon religion was seen more as a curiosity than a liability.

"The difference between then and now is the emergence of the fundamentalist Christians as a political force," says Salt Lake City developer Kem Gardner, a prominent Utah Democrat and longtime Romney friend. "The evangelicals have always had this negative attitude toward Mormons, but they didn't have the political clout then."

President George W. Bush tapped into the evangelicals to build support within the Republican Party. Presidential candidate John McCain and Romney himself have tried to embrace the same folks.

And it's not just the evangelicals who feel it is politically correct to attack Mormons. Conservative African-American commentator and columnist Mychal Massie had no qualms about lambasting then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid for his LDS faith. Massie's argument was based on the now-defunct LDS policy that blacks couldn't hold the Mormon priesthood. He drew the illogical conclusion that Reid - a Democrat - had to be a bigot if he was a Mormon.

The same illogical attacks are aimed at Romney because he has ancestors who were polygamists - even though he is the only Republican front-runner who has been married only once.

Hatch has stood on principle before against powerful factions of his party. One example is his support of federal funding for stem-cell research. He could shine now, in the winter of his long Senate career, by facing down those factions whose bigotry toward his faith is an ugly stain on the political party that he, and they, hold dear.