I'd like to respond to several parts of this multi-discussion.
The part in the Word of Wisdom about abstaining from tobacco, hot drinks, and strong drinks became commandment when Brigham Young made it the standard of the church. The rest of the Word of Wisdom is not enforced because the Word of Wisdom was originally supposed to be just a suggestion, not a commandment. Before Brigham Young made it a commandment to abstain from tobacco, hot drinks, and strong drinks, abstaining from these things was also just a suggestion not a commandment.
I'm a convert to Mormonism and before I started going back to church recently I had researched Hinduism and believed it was a sin to eat meat. While I don't believe it's a sin anymore, I follow this suggestion to eat meat sparingly. Today, I'm still following my old Catholic practice of not eating read meat because it is a Friday of Lent. (I used to be Catholic.)
I have to say that I loved that show Big Love on HBO about the polygamist family. Polygamy-practicing offshoots of the LDS Church seem very Mormon to me besides being polygamist. At least the ones they show on Big Love do. But not the ones that live on the compound. They seem more Amish to me. I know that Joseph Smith was called to practice polygamy because Mormonism is rooted in restorationism. They had to restore everything -- even Old Testament polygamy. But I also know that God wanted polygamy to stop. The LDS Church has revealed to us that God wants this practice to stop being practiced on the Earth. You're always gonna have these polygamy-practicing schism churches because some people believe polygamy is necessary for salvation.
Of course Mormons are technically Christian but there are many members of older Christian traditions who limit the definition of Christian to exclude Mormons. According to them, in order to be a true Christian you have to believe what many Christians believed hundreds of years after Jesus died. Supposedly, doctrines from later creeds were believed by the original Christians (some of which saw Jesus when he walked the Earth). But yeah, Mormons feel very strongly about being considered Christian because everything we do is in the name of Jesus Christ. The name of our Church bears his name, unlike many older Christian churches. In our opinion, we're the truest Christians because we believe the fulness of Christ's Gospel has been restored through us.