LDS Members Outraged by HBO's Big Love

It's not big news that the HBO series "Big Love" has been annoying - no, downright outraging members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, more commonly known as Mormons, for the name of their "new" gospel of Christ, since it started. (Please note that I used quotation marks around "new" not because I believe or disbelieve that the Book of Mormon is a gospel right up there with the big four, but because it is their claim, made without any existing proof, since the golden tablets Joseph Smith said he translated subsequently disappeared.)

In the March 9 edition of TV guide, an upcoming (by now probably shown) episode of "Big Love" was discussed, in which the character of the first wife (played by Jeanne Triplehorn) of a polygamous Mormon goes through an excommunication in the secret inner sanctum of the Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. If you haven't seen the HBO show, the polygamist husband, played by Bill Paxton, has three wives. This is of course illegal, as well as banned by the leadership of the church. Non-Mormons typically think of tiny mountain towns in Utah or walled compounds in Texas as hotbeds of semi-Mormon (it's been outlawed, after all) polygamous cults, but Bill and his wives live in the suburbs. He spends different nights with different wives. And probably uses a lot of those little blue pills.

But the biggest outcries from the LDS are about HBO 's "Big Love" showing the rooms deep inside the Temple that not even all Mormons get to see. Remember, this is just a TV show, so they're not really the secret rooms, they're only sets. And Jeanne is not really wearing a special sacred dress; it's a costume. It doesn't seem to matter to Mormons. In the March 23 issue of TV guide, viewer (or reader, anyway) Sharon Blackburn, of South Jordan in (can you guess?) Utah writes "It's bad enough HBO airs Big Love, but... to promote this tasteless encroachment into sacred religious rites is disgusting." There's another similar, but not quite as angry, letter hoping the magazine will show more sensitivity to religions in the future.

Now maybe it's just me, but I always thought that churches, or in the case of the LDS, their temple, don't belong to the members, or a select group of the members, or the denomination (Lutheran, Baptist, whatever), but to God. I thought churches were places where anyone with belief in God could go to worship, and those who don't believe or aren't certain could go to learn. I thought that all of God's children - in other words, all human beings - were welcome in all of God's houses. He says, after all, that He is everywhere, and that He loves us. His Son defines God as Love. So why is a part of their Temple so secret?

Ancient pagan cults had secret rites; they often involved blood sacrifice, or sex, or excessive eating and drinking, and only specially initiated members of the cults could attend. But those days, I thought, were long over. I've been to several different Protestant churches, a Catholic church, and even a Jewish synagogue, and I was welcomed in all of them, and as far as I could tell, nothing was hidden from me. I was welcomed to join in the worship of the God all those churches worship.

Why does the LDS keep a part of their Temple secret even from most of their own members? I'm not entirely sure I believe the "most sacred religious rites" line. Let's remember that Christians - and since they are the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, they should be Christians - believe Jesus came for everyone; He spent his time with the worst sinners, not the most sanctimonious priests. Surely He would not say that any individual or group of people wasn't good enough to be with Him. He baptized openly, with large crowds of people watching and/or taking part. No secrets there. He preached in private houses, but also in village squares and on mountainsides. Again, no secrets.

Surely a church with nothing to hide wouldn't keep secrets from its own members. And a church with something to hide - well, let's just say I'm glad I'm not a part of that, whether that means I'm excluded from highest heaven or not. (And one more time: it's only a television show! Lighten up, LDS!)