Reuters news service's FaithWorld says the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a "fundamental" PR problem that is only being reinforced by the raid on the FLDS compound in Texas.

In Utah, non-Mormons are aware of the gulf between the LDS and the FLDS, but Reuters' Ed Stoddard writes that is not true in the rest of the nation and the world:

[The LDS] may have renounced polygamy over a century ago but the breakaway sects which continue to practice plural marriage are the ones that often catch the public eye, leading to the popular misconception that all Mormon men have, or strive to have, more than one (often underage) wife.

As all of this was unfolding my wife happened to mention to a friend of hers in South Africa — a friend who is well-educated, a journalist and a devout Christian — that I was covering the story. Her friend’s response? “Those Mormons, they’re weird. I don’t answer the door when they knock,” she said. My wife said as far as her friend was concerned, Mormons were Mormons and that was that.

... The perception is clearly there: Mormons are the funny fellows taking multiple wives and living in isolated retreats in remote patches of America.

In Canada, the National Post reports that British Columbia's attorney general is considering bringing in a special prosecutor because the prosecutors in his office have no stomach for the legal nightmare of taking on the FLDS compound in Bountiful, B.C. Says AG Wally Oppal:

This matter has to come to fruition. All right-thinking Canadians abhor what is said to be going on there -- 50-yearold men married to 15-yearold girls and all the exploitation.

Oppal said he could order his prosecutors to take on the case, but wants a more optimistic prosecutor.

I would like a more aggressive approach, which means you lay the charge and let the defence worry about the constitutionality issue. That's normally the way things are done.

Oppal's prosecutors, however, have history to support them. The AP offers a closer look at the history of ineffective U.S. campaigns to eradicate Mormon-style polygamy in the 20th Century.

Polygamy historian Ken Driggs told the AP's Jennifer Dobner the raids only have a short-term effect:

It ended up strengthening them in the long run. It's not going to make it go away.