LDS: We're not FLDS

As authorities have investigated a polygamist sect in Texas, Mormon church leaders in Salt Lake City have largely stayed on the sidelines, weighing a response.

Now the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon church, is starting a public-relations campaign that seeks a delicate balance: distinguishing itself from a small, separate group that claims some of the same history while not denigrating someone else's beliefs.

It's a sensitive issue for the Mormon church, which was persecuted in its early years."People have the right to worship as they choose, and we aren't interested in attacking someone else's beliefs," LDS church apostle Quentin Cook said in a statement. "At the same time, we have an obligation to define ourselves rather than be defined by events and incidents that have nothing to do with us."

"Mormons," he said, "have nothing whatsoever to do with this polygamous sect in Texas."

Cook said the church's feeling that it had to do something was confirmed by a survey of 1,000 people it commissioned in late May that found 36 percent thought the Texas compound was part of the LDS Church or the "Mormon Church" based in Salt Lake City.

Another 6 percent said the LDS and FLDS were partly related, 29 percent said the groups were not connected at all, and 29 percent weren't sure, the survey found.

The centerpiece of the new campaign is a package of materials and video on the LDS Web site. The video clips feature interviews with video of Texas LDS church members - an orthopedic surgeon, a former Houston Oilers quarterback, a news anchor - to show that church members are part of the community and "much like everybody else," as opposed to insular polygamist groups.

The Web site highlights other differences. There are no arranged marriages in the LDS church, and members "wear regular clothing and have contemporary hairstyles," for instance. *