DESPITE claiming that its show Big Love is not really about Mormons, HBO TV in the US has drawn fire from the Church of Latter Day Saints which insists that:
More and more Mormon themes are now being woven into the show and that the characters are often unsympathetic figures who come across as narrow and self-righteous.
When church members learned that – in an episode scheduled for broadcast on March 15 – a sacred and private LDS temple ceremony would be depicted, they threatened a boycott of the network. E-mail chain letters also urged members to cancel their subscriptions to AOL, which along with Time Warner, owns the pay cable network.
Big Love cast Ginnifer Goodwin, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Bill Paxton and Chloe Sevigny.
According to a TV Guide interview with series creators Mark V Olsen and Will Scheffer, the episode will include the depiction of an endowment ceremony within a Mormon temple. Only LDS members with a temple recommend and in good standing may witness such ceremonies.
Said Olsen:
We go into the endowment room and the celestial room, and we present what happens in those ceremonies. That’s never been shown on television before.
According to this report, an “ex-Mormon consultant” was recruited for help in the scenes, including sets and costuming. HBO confirmed the episode’s scenes Monday.
Olsen added:
It’s not for shock value. It’s really a very important part of the story.
The LDS Church issued a statement this week criticising depictions of the church generally in the news media and Hollywood, and specifically in Big Love.
Now comes another series of Big Love, and despite earlier assurances from HBO, it once again blurs the distinctions between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the show’s fictional non-Mormon characters and their practices. Such things say much more about the insensitivities of writers, producers and TV executives than they say about Latter-day Saints.
The series stars Bill Paxton as Bill Henrickson, the owner of a chain of hardware stores, who is married to three wives, played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin.
For three seasons, the show has depicted the trials of running such a complicated household, including various depictions of mainstream Mormon characters and practices.
Said the LDS:
Before the first season of the HBO series Big Love aired more than two years ago, the show’s creators and HBO executives assured the Church that the series wouldn’t be about Mormons. However, Internet references to Big Love indicate that more and more Mormon themes are now being woven into the show and that the characters are often unsympathetic figures who come across as narrow and self-righteous.
The Church has also seized upon the TV row to portray itself as a “victim” in the recent controversy over Proposition 8, when it helped fund the anti-gay-marriage initiative in California.
In its statement, the LDS says:
In recent months, some gay activists have barraged the media with accusations about ‘hateful’ attitudes of Latter-day Saints in supporting Proposition 8 in California, which maintained the traditional definition of marriage. They even organized a protest march around the Salt Lake Temple … The Church has refused to be goaded into a Mormons versus gays battle and has simply stated its position in tones that are reasonable and respectful.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
March 11th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Oh dear. Are we looking at another incidence of offense?
Bet most of them won’t give up their cable TV though. Sounds like AOL/Time Warner have some sort of monopoly on the network so their economic threats of a boycott carry about as much weight as a supermodel.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Mormons boycotting you can only be good, it means they won’t come knocking on your door
March 11th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Whaaaah, my beliefs are being offended.
Funny how the Morons have no problem stomping women and LGBTs into the ground yet scream like babies when their precious “beliefs” aren’t treated with kid gloves. Sorry, but if you’re going to use your religion as a weapon I refuse to show it any respect whatsoever.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
When they knock on my door, I always open it and stand there completely naked with a knife in my hand and the words “Help Me!” cut into my chest. They always rudely decline my neighbourly offer to pop in for a cup of tea and a biscuit.
Bloody nutters everywhere.
March 12th, 2009 at 12:02 am
How can it be “reasonable and respectful” to say “your life doesn’t fit our mold, so you don’t deserve equal protection under the law, you don’t deserve the same marital rights as everyone else.”
Wearing a smile while you tell someone to go to hell is STILL telling them to go to hell. Why do they not get it that their message itself, regardless how it is stated, is what is the problem?
March 12th, 2009 at 12:13 am
Sounds like they are worried this episode will expose their ludicrous secret ritual of the sacred underpants of power! Newsflash… If people like me already know about it, then it’s hardly a secret anymore is it?
March 12th, 2009 at 2:01 am
As a huge fan of the show, I’ve got to just step in and say that (among a vast number of other things) they’re completely wrong in stating the Big Love blurs the lines between the LDS church and the fundamentalists. In fact the writers have always gone to lengths to emphasize the fact that the polygamists believe that the LDS church was compromised when they gave up The Principle (of plural marriage), and that the polygamists were, in turn, ostracized from not only the LDS church, but from the community as a whole. The relationship between the various polygamist sects and the LDS church in the show mirror reality very closely (at least they appear to from my outside perspective). Honestly, it’s the Church, in this case, that is guilty of engendering the appearance that there is less of a separation between mainstream LDS beliefs and the fundamentalist polygamists.
(I will admit that in recent episodes, much to my own delight, things have started moving in a more controversial direction. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone by giving details, so I’ll just recommend that everyone watch the show. It really is pretty awesome.)
March 12th, 2009 at 3:51 am
The Church has refused to be goaded into a Mormons versus gays battle and has simply stated its position in tones that are reasonable and respectful.
Inasmuch as denying people rights can be ‘respectful’.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:51 am
Victim?
Hardly.
They are a little peeved that someone is being disrespectful, but I’d assume that any Church/faith/group would do that. They have just as much right to be offended about Big Love as the GBLT community has to be offended about Prop 8. This double standard that some people apply sickens me.
March 12th, 2009 at 4:30 am
Oh, please…religious ceremonies and religious events have been depicted in the movies for over 100 years. What is the big deal about certain Mormon ceremonies being included as part of a story line in a cable television series?
Has the LDS Church or its members actually seen the episode in question before preparing the press releases attacking it?
I also love the lines about “[Mormons] characters [on Big Love] are often unsympathetic figures who come across as narrow and self-righteous.” O.K., Mormons can never be depicted as unsympathetic on television? Should Mormons now be exempt from any negative depiction?
March 12th, 2009 at 6:15 am
Watch what you want, and dismiss the Mormon outrage if you want.
But if you do, I don’t want to hear you whining about offensive cartoons about Mohammad, or protest acts like desecrating the Koran. If mocking the sacred imagery of Mormonism is OK, it must be OK for Islam too. Or Judaism for that matter. No more cries of anti-semitism the next time someone desecrates a menorah.
Capiche?
March 12th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Seth R., I think you’ve got the wrong blog. Atheists are against religion, and that means against all religion. The only cartoon about Mo that could offend me is one suggesting that he was in some sense a nice guy. Indeed, I’ve often wondered if Mo existed at all, given his tendency to fly around on magical winged horses etc.
March 12th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Seth R. New reader eh? No religion, especially the ones continually waving the victim card, is protected from the magic ‘pin of deflation’ on this site. ‘Respect’ is not a word commonly used here as it is seldom deserved.
March 12th, 2009 at 9:49 am
I always thought that the secret ritual meant all the elders went into the back sanctum, broke out the booze and celebrated that all the adherents to the mumbo jumbo that is mormonism coughed up 10% of their income to the racket established in the early 19th century by the angel moroni giving Joseph Smith a gold book.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:10 am
I’m trying to work out whether Seth R is barking up the wrong end of the stick. Or just barking.
March 12th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
It’s intellectually fascinating, though, innit? We’ve got Scientology, invented by a failed sf writer and health charlatan at a time when detailed records were kept of his cynicism. We’ve got the Mormons, invented by a fairly obvious fraud at a time and place when accurate reporting was a wee bit harder. Then we’ve got the so-called major faiths that think they’re oh-so-superior because there’s not a scrap of solid historical evidence about their founders at all. And they all claim equal ‘respect’, and have their little schisms and hissy fits. To misquote Larkin, ‘They always make me throw up/ These solemn nursery games/ Oh when will people grow up?’
March 12th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
I don’t suppose this TV programme will include how mormonism was invented by a drunkard and womanising liar?
March 12th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Do you think perhaps they are afraid of the ridicule they will get when people see on TV how stupid their pointless little rituals are? They must be very embarrassed of them to make this much fuss.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Seth R.,
Whatever are you babbling about? We mock everyone’s religion here. Or haven’t you been paying attention?
March 13th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Tom Hanks puts this brouhaha into perspective (and waxes prophetic) at the 3rd season premiere of Big Love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7JgK_mmEBk
“There’s gonna be lies, and secrets, and discoveries, and problems. Television!”