Recently, I realized I'd become a sort of perforce defender of Mormons. I wrote an Op-Ed piece about it, because in research and writing my new novel, 'Cage of Stars,' I met a great many Mormons (conservative and liberal, fun-loving and stuffy, strait-laced and free-spirited) but NO polygamists.

Polygamy is a big topic (and big business) right now because of accused pedophile and real-estate huckster Warren Jeffs, the most recent addition to the Ten Most Wanted list, and the hit HBO series 'Big Love,' in which Bill Paxton plays a Satl Lake City businessman with three families in three houses.

That's absurd; and it's unfair.

First of all, while people say that some Mormons "cling" to the ancient pioneer practice of polygamy (and Mormons weren't the only ones to do it; remember the musical 'Paint Your Wagon,' famous for the song, 'They Call the Wind Mariah'?), they really do not. The splinter fundamentalists who do are excommunicated and have been since 1904.

But for some reason, perhaps because it is a new religion with beliefs that don't always mix with the Judeo-Christian mainstream in American, Mormons get a smack across the chops for things such as this, and caustic mockery for other customs of their religion (such as the prohibition against drinking, smoking and caffeine ... and this is bad, why?) If any other religious group or ethnic group were so openly derided, peoople of goodwill would object.

Mormons once did practice polygamy. They indeed wanted to "grow" their numbers, and are still famously fertile. When they practiced polygamy, they also were pioneers, making their way across the country from points east to Utah. Some men didn't survive. The widows they left couldn't, under law at the time, own their own property or inherit. The decision to have more more than one wife might have been aimed at practicality as much as the begetting of progeny.

Few, however, do, over the lambasting of Mormons. Most say that they're used to it; It comes with the territory. But when they're put down for beliefs they no longer even believe, it's dificult not to be offended -- even if you aren't a Mormon or a born-again Christian of any kind.

I'm not an apologist for Mormons. Not all of them like my novel, although some find it touching and tender.

I am an apologist for ANYONE who isn't getting a fair shake.

Jackie M.