I’ve said this before—it’s hard to keep up, and I’m not the only one. Consider Joe Biden.

The Democrat senator from Delaware plainly did not know he would hurt his presidential campaign when he praised a rival candidate, Barack Obama, as "articulate" and "clean." After hearing those words, the media concluded in unison that Biden had somehow insulted all blacks.

Clarence Page, a black columnist, said black people could not help but be offended when they hear the "A-word." (I didn’t even know we had an "A-word"!)

Shortly after Biden’s misstep, Mitt Romney announced his candidacy for president. Romney has the misfortune of being Mormon, something the media, stroking its collective beard, found alarming. The headline in USA Today thundered: "Will Mormon Faith Hurt Romney?" Other news outlets used words like "cult," "unorthodox," "controversial" and "odd."

There is indeed something odd about Mormonism and the media, but it’s not what reporters think it is. It’s the uneven attention they give it. We already have a Mormon—Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada—in a prominent government position—majority leader of the U.S. Senate.

I searched online for articles about Reid and Mormonism, and I found only about a third of the stories that I found for Romney and Mormonism. But Reid has held public office six times as long as Romney. And the coverage of Reid’s religion isn’t nearly as negative as the Romney coverage. You will look in vain for a USA Today headline that has ever asked: "Will Mormon Faith Hurt Reid?"

Two things are clear from all this hypocrisy. The first is that reporters really don’t much care what religion a politician adheres to, as long as he is Leftist in his views. Reid is reliably so, and his religion gets a pass. Romney, on the other hand, is ominously conservative, so the puppy dogs of the press will pull and tear and growl about him until they scare voters away.

The other fact is that the Left has given us a political culture that awards get-out-of-jail-free cards for some genuinely nasty comments, and "gotcha’s." In last fall’s Maryland Senate race, the white candidate was a liberal Democrat and the black candidate a conservative Republican. This unusual state of affairs prompted a Maryland pastor, of all people, one Rev. Delman Coates, to make this truly nasty statement to his mostly black congregation on the Sunday before Election Day: "Everyone who’s your color is not your kind. All your skinfolk is not your kinfolk." Because of his race, he escaped the wrath that befell Joe Biden.

What we need instead are bedrock values like courtesy, civility and respect for all people—principles found in the words of Jesus. Within simple passages like the Golden Rule, the Second Greatest Commandment and the story of the Good Samaritan lies the root of human dignity for Western civilization. Without it, culture corrodes. Already you can see how bad it has become.

Tom Minnery is senior vice president of government and public policy for Focus on the Family and author of Why You Can’t Stay Silent: A Biblical Mandate to Shape Our Culture.