Just come at us head on

Wow, has it really been this long since I've posted anything?  I have GOT to make this more regular...
So the whole Romney leading the Republican pack thing has generated questions about Mormonism, some from genuinely curious people, others from gotcha artists trying to get attention by making the candidate stumble or handle something gauchely.  For the most part, Romney's been equally artful at closing down the situation, usually with a terse "I'm not answering questions about my faith right now?"
On the right, however, whenever situations make the news, the inevitable anti-Mormon attack squad comes out, followed by the defenders (some equally combative, and others simply standing up for their beliefs in a peaceful non-contentious manner).  Myself, I probably fall in between.  In a face-to-face situation, I generally judge if the person with tough questions is genuinely curious or not, and if they are, I'll take all the time necessary to help them understand, but if they're not, I try to just move on so as to avoid contention.  On a public forum, on the other hand, I try to bring to bear something direct, and forceful without name-calling or disrespect even if those are not the rules the other guy is following, but sometimes my forcefulness might tip over into some belittling.
Why?  Because I think it's important to call a distortion by its name, demonstrate the lack of logic behind false arguments, show the lack of accuracy in false claims, and not let the twisters have the last word.  This time I'm refraining on the public forum in favor of posting on this more anonymous one a fairly comprehensive answer to some common anti-Mormon accusations that someone neatly packaged into a single vacuous list.
Here's the anti-Mormon post in question with my own numbering added for ease of reference:

1. I have an issue with Mormons who lie and say they are Christians.

2. NO WAY do Christians believe when they die – they become god as good or greater than Jesus.
3. NO WAY do Christians believe when they die – they continue to have spirit babies
4. NO WAY do Christians believe in 3 heavens and no hell
5. NO WAY do Christians believe Satan was Jesus’s brother
6. NO WAY do Christians believe in wearing sacred underwear
7. NO WAY do Christians believe in anything but the bible as the ONLY UN-CHANGING TRUE word of Jesus. (Mormons use other books written by their leaders doctrines and convanents and the Book of Mormon.

1. Claiming we're lying about worshiping Christ is about the least charitable (i.e. Christ-like) way you could put it.  You don't agree with our doctrine, fine.  You think we're misled, fine.  You think we're inaccurate when we claim we worship Jesus, fine.  We can talk about all that.  But no Mormon is deliberately trying to fool anyone else about who we worship.  That would be pointless unless there's some conspiracy at the top to gain some sordid profit from the falsehood.  If there is one, it's spectacularly ineffective.  The leaders of the church aren't all that wealthy...

2. Mormons believe the Bible when it says Christian believers are joint heirs with Christ which is to say we will inherit all the Father has just as He did and know the Father as He did, becoming one with them as they are one as Jesus prayed for on his dying eve in the record of John, which is to say to live as they do--live Eternal life.  This doctrine is reinforced through distinctively Mormon scripture, but is itself solidly biblical.

3. Milk before meat, of course, but what does this person think God does?  What does this person conceive of as the work and glory of God?  If He delights in bringing souls into the world to be tried and perhaps found worthy of returning to Him and inheriting His life, why would it be so hard to conceive of that life as consisting of the creation of new eternal families?  Of course an honest person curious about true doctrine would have to pass through a belief in prophets and Priesthood authority before arriving at the way that doctrine is stated (which is itself an offensively terse way of framing Joseph Smith's words here), but there's nothing anti-Biblical or non-Christian about such a belief.  In fact the Bible does speak constantly of a covenant made with Abraham that we all can inherit, which consists in having an eternal continuation of posterity.

4. We believe Christ Himself who spoke of the many mansions within His Father's house, and Paul who speaks of several degrees of glory to be inherited by bodies after the resurrection of the dead.  And we most certainly believe in the Biblical concept of Hell as a place of endless torment.  What we don't believe in is the non-Biblical idea of a single monolithic heaven offered as the same reward for the barely Christian and the always valiant Christians.   Neither do we believe Paradise (a place of rest for the spirits of the righteous dead whose favorable judgment is assured come resurrection time) is the Celestial abode of the Father (which Christ hadn't visited AFTER His resurrection by His own words here, AFTER having promised a fellow crucifixion victim an immediate ride to Paradise as in here).

5. We go even further than that.  We believe WE are all Satan's brothers and sisters.  Which means we are also Christ's brother.  The idea of God as a Father in Heaven means that we are all His children.  What's left completely figurative in the bible is the narrative that we existed as spirits before this life, and that Christ also was His child (His creation).  Satan was expelled from heaven (where God lives with His children, no?) before the creation of the earth along with a third of the host of heaven for having rebelled against God's plan prior to this earth's creation for a Savior to make salvation possible for all of us who would come to this earth for a trial to see if we would obey God (and therefore Christ who is a perfect example of the Father).  So although it's understandable that without the narrative from modern-day revelation (the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price) anchoring the interpretation of these and other disparate passages, one would be left with fragments, but it is in fact Biblical to think this way.  The problem doesn't even lie there, but rather in the imputation that somehow we equate Satan and Jesus, making God the Father into some kind of evil being who created evil along with good, and that we somehow worship an inferior being if our version of Christ can be thus abased in our doctrine.  That's a twist unlicensed by any fair reading of our doctrine.  The principle we teach is that God created us all, but that Satan CHOSE wrong, and BECAME evil through his choices.  Christ, on the other hand, CHOSE to follow His Father perfectly, and became the world's only example of a flawless life, and earned status as a God, member of the 3-member Godhead, one with the Father in every purpose and able to create, and judge.  Christ and Satan are thus diametrically opposed, and ultimately, Satan's power, in LDS theology, is limited and always subjugated by Christ's authority.

6. The Bible is rife with examples of special signs of special covenants, from circumcision to phylacteries.  The underwear isn't sacred or magic per se, the covenants are, and why should anyone care if I choose to use the fact that I wear a certain kind of underwear as a reminder to keep certain promises to God?  It's not non-Biblical, and prevents me from being spiritually naked, no?  Does anything I wear prevent me from believing in Christ as my Savior?  I can't think of a single non-Mormon Christian sect who believes clothing has any bearing whatsoever on salvation.  This accusation is just hypocritical.

7. The Bible itself never claims to be a closed canon, or infallible.  Without committing the heinous anachronism of claiming John meant his injunction against adding to or taking away from "this book" to apply to the whole Bible instead of only to the Book of Revelation as he actually intended it, this critique of Mormon doctrine is left completely merit-less, uninformed and inaccurate on its face as it is.  The best article on the matter is here.

Through the exercise of responding point for point, there's a common theme I've found.  In every case, critics of LDS doctrine feel the need to distort before critiquing.  In context, without mischaracterization (willful or ignorant as the case may be), critics may well have substantial disagreements.  One of them is not that we don't worship Christ, or ground our doctrine Biblically.  I just really wish people would be honest with themselves and with us in public so that a discussion of the merits can lead to the discovery of truth, rather than turning communication into a battle of faulty interpretations.  Just come at us head on...