Mormons say polygamist sects a head ache

By Ed Stoddard

DALLAS (Reuters) - The mainstream Mormon church renounced polygamy over a century ago, but it says the breakaway sects that practice plural marriage are giving it a public relations head ache.

Attention has once again been drawn to the issue by the raids this month on a Texas compound run by followers of jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs. More than 400 children were removed in the raids sparked by an abuse complaint and their fate remains in legal limbo.

Quentin Cook, a spiritual elder with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told Reuters in a telephone interview that his church of 13 million had to constantly contend with public misconceptions stirred by the actions of a few thousand polygamists who were not attached to it.

Members of the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints keep to themselves on compounds in remote parts of Arizona, Utah, Texas and elsewhere.

"The confusion is of concern very much for the Church ... we have got over 13 million members and if you look at that membership the Church has doubled since 1987," Cook said on Tuesday.

He said many of the faith's members did not have an ancestral link to polygamy, which the Church condoned until 1890, and resented being lumped with those who practiced it.

"The vast majority of those would be converts to the Church; they would not be people who have any ancestors who would have been involved any way in polygamy ... They work in normal occupations; they are not living in compounds," he told Reuters from Salt Lake City, where the Church is based.

"So for them it is a concern and they are always disappointed when people seem to think that somehow there is a connection," he said.