SALT LAKE CITY - The upcoming premiere of HBO's "Big Love" is causing a big buzz in the Beehive State.
Everyone from practicing polygamists to the Mormon church - which shunned the practice more than a century ago - are anxiously anticipating the fallout from the show about a Utah polygamist and his three sometimes desperate housewives.
Public perceptions are a concern of the LDS church, which claims 12 million members worldwide.
In 1843, church founder Joseph Smith said he had a revelation from God allowing the practice of plural marriage. In 1890, a subsequent church president, Wilford Woodruff, made public a revelation declaring that church members should stop practicing polygamy. The federal government had required the Utah territory end its endorsement of polygamy as a condition of statehood. Utah became a state in 1896.
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