As you can imagine many Mormon's aren't too thrilled with the show, but I find it an entertaining show and don't think it provides any harsher treatment to the Mormon's than film and TV have been doling out to Catholics for as long as I can remember.  Can we say "The Exorcist"?

Apparently there's an upcoming episode of Big Love that will include a depiction of a temple ceremony and this is really irking some Mormons.  Some are worried that without the proper context the ceremony will come off looking kookie, but given the show's producers' approach to this point I don't think they'll do anything over the top.

Reading about this reminded me of when the Mormon temple opened in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.  I was a little boy (must have been around seven or eight) and I got to go in the Temple with my Dad who was very active in the church at the time.  The memory is vague, but I do seem to remember lots of maroon carpet and what I thought of as a really big, brass bathtub.  If I remember correctly it was used to baptize boys as proxies for people who had died before having the opportunity to be baptized themselves but I'm not entirely sure that's accurate. 

My family left the church when I was about 10, but as you can imagine I have a keen interest in how the Mormon church is treated because of my early involvement.  To give you an example of what I mean I can tell you that when I was a senior in high school I was attending a small Lutheran school and the principal insisted on trying to cure me of the influence that the Mormon "cult" had on me.  While I didn't consider myself a Mormon any more I also knew that what I'd experienced hadn't been a cult and I let him know that.  In fact it's one of the few times I remember arguing vociferously with an adult.  So I tend to be sympathetic towards the Mormons' sensitivities to their treatment by others, but in the case of Big Love I don't think they're getting treated any differently than other religions have been by the entertainment industry.