I am not a Mormon.

I am not a born-again Christian.

If I sporadically attend the Episcopal Church, it is, in part, because I love the Book of Common Prayer.
However, though some Mormons may not be not fans of my new novel, Cage of Stars -- in which a Mormon girl comes to maturity steeped in vengeance after a brutal crime against her family – I find myself in the position of wanting to defend them.

Why?

Through research and writing, I came to know many Mormons. And I was shocked at the casual prejudice and everyday contempt directed at them, as well as by how few spoke out against that. As my character, Veronica Swan, says, “Even good people think that Mormons are all nuts in a cult who get married off by their leader at the age of 13.”

It’s not true. And it’s not fair.

All Mormons get a bad rap because of the bizarre behavior of a few nuts. Lumped in with the bizarros, they’re all viewed by the rest of us with a kind of prurient glee.

Polygamy (marrying more than one wife) is a fave rave. Taboo and racy, it’s just what we adore: Something we can all gather round and disapprove.

It’s also illegal; and, whatever they claim, people who do are not Mormons. Since 1904, polygamists have been excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of latter day Saints.

But a new website – driven by the HBO hit ‘Big Love’ – has been devoted in recent weeks to debating the “social issue” of plural marriage. In ‘Big Love,’ Bill Paxton (the Everyman Actor) plays a professional man living in Salt Lake City – with three wives, three houses and three families. The brainchild of Mark V. Wilson and Will Scheffer, ‘Big Love’ is touted as the lighter side of polygamy.

Then there’s the dark side.

Also over the past few weeks, Larry King and Anderson Cooper have both given “the issue” full news hours since fugitive polygamist leader and real-estate huckster Warren Jeffs made the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.

The other nine folks on the list aren’t Mormons. Can you name one?

The first thing people ask me when they hear about my novel is whether I’m a Mormon, since I have seven kids. The second thing they ask is about polygamy.

“Do you know that more than 100,000 Americans live that way?” an intelligent woman chirped last week.

Actually, I don’t. I don’t know even know if I believe it.

Yet, the Polygamy Diaries (a series of Arizona NewsChannel3’s reports on Colorado City, where, allegedly “thousands” of polygamous families live) is getting great fanfare.

Big love is big business.

But in truth, the huge majority of the world’s 10 million Mormons are as appalled by polygamy as Catholics are by the insinuation that all priests are child molesters.

Some splinter fanatics do cling to it. And 100 years ago, there were massive polygamous families. Mormon leaders took a dozen wives, having a dozen children by each. However, Mormons were pioneers. Men didn’t always survive the cross-country trek from the east to Utah. Unmarried women couldn’t own property; their children couldn’t inherit. The decision may have been as much be practical as to propagate – though Mormons are famously prolific when it comes to kids.

The girls who married often were young.

But my own grandfather was 17, and my grandmother 14, when they married, 80 years ago. They were not unique; and their marriage lasted 60 years.

As a beloved friend of mine, Kahlil, a Mormon (and the devout and devoted mother of nine cool kids) says, Mormons get slammed by public and press not just because of historical polygamy (and theirs is not the only religion to have practiced it) but because Mormonism is rather new.

It does embrace some weird beliefs. None, however, is weirder than the notion that, 2,000 years ago, the son of God was born to a woman who never had sex: Mormons believe that the birth of Jesus was the result of a sexual act between Mary and God. Either way, one is able to believe based not on truth, but only on faith.

In the days I spent living with Kahlil’s family and friends, I saw very strict, self-reliant people whose religion was the fabric of life itself. I’d conceived my fictional Ronnie as far too conservative. Mormon youth may not drink or smoke (and this is made fun of…why?)

They do spoof and goof and dance to the same bad music my kids adore – from bands with names such as Wingnut Pilots – and don’t think a day is complete without candy or the computer.
No one handed me tracts or tirades. But they won my respect.

I don’t agree with everything they do. They don’t agree with everything I do. The largest LDS bookstore in Utah refused to stock my novel because, for plot and personal reasons, some of the depictions of Mormon traditions were fictional.

But if we can all go goo-goo over the love child of a Hollywood papa whose religion was founded by a guy who claimed he came from Venus 300 years ago, why can’t we get off the backs of an evangelistic faith that seeks to do no harm? And why can’t we stop clucking over our beliefs about their beliefs – especially the ones they don’t even have?