Topekan Mary Lou Schmidt has made no secret during the years that she is a Pagan and a follower of the goddess Isis.

For being so public about her beliefs, Schmidt has taken her share of heat from detractors opposed to her spirituality, many challenging her in the comments section of CJOnline.com.

Yet even Schmidt’s harshest critics may sympathize with her on her current plight, namely distancing her goddess from another ISIS — this one the acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the organization terrorizing parts of the Middle East.

"I know this group is a murderous, horrible bunch of people," Schmidt said. "They beheaded that wonderful, courageous journalist, and they’ve been killing hundreds of innocent people."

For that very reason, Schmidt said, "those of us who believe in the goddess Isis, who is a goddess of peace and love," are upset with media outlets for using the term ISIS to refer to the terrorist group.

Shortly after ISIS landed in the news in June, Schmidt went on the defensive, asking major media outlets to avoid using the term ISIS to refer to the terrorist group and thereby besmirch the name of her goddess.

"Christians wouldn’t want a terrorist group with the acronym ‘JESUS’ or ‘GOD,’" Schmidt said. "They would consider it an insult to their religion. The same with us."

Since ISIS hit the news a couple of months ago, Schmidt has contacted major news organizations in an effort to get them to stop using the ISIS designation and instead shorten it to IS — for Islamic State. If that didn’t work, she suggested ISIL, which stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Despite her protests, many mainstream media outlets — including the Huffington Post, New York Times and MSNBC — continue using the term ISIS. Schmidt lamented that some using ISIS are among what she considers "the most liberal" news outlets.

Outlets that have been using IS include Reuters, FOX News and Aljazeera.com.

Clearly, there has been no consensus to this point on how to refer to the terrorist organization.

On June 23, Schmidt and a friend launched a website that, in essence, stated their opposition to having the name of their goddess used as an acronym for the terrorist organization. The Facebook page was called "Isis is a Goddess, Not a Terrorist."

Schmidt said the Facebook page received some good responses, but to her chagrin, some people posted profane and vulgar comments.

On Aug. 22, nearly two months after the page was launched, Schmidt said, she received an email from Facebook that the page had been taken down for violating terms and agreements.

The letter, signed by the "Facebook Team," stated in part that "pages that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down pages that attack an individual or group."

Yet Schmidt and her friend insist they did nothing wrong, and that their page didn’t insult anyone’s faith or religion.

"Some of the people who were commenting were the ones being threatening," Schmidt said her friend wrote in a letter to Facebook. "You should block them, not us. We were only trying to bring about awareness of our goddess."

Schmidt said she and other followers of the goddess Isis remain dismayed by the whole turn of events. Schmidt said she wanted to educate the public about how her goddess is the polar opposite of the ISIS terrorist group.

"I just want people to understand how much we despise this group," Schmidt said, referring to the Islamic State. "We think the media could very easily use one of those other two terms — IS or ISIL."

Schmidt also said she had heard from a woman named Isis who was launching a petition drive to get the media to stop using the acronym ISIS to refer to the terrorist group. The woman told Schmidt the media’s usage of ISIS has caused women with the name Isis undue anguish during the past few months.

Another news item last week told about a planned condominium complex in West Palm Beach, Fla., that originally was going to be called Isis Downtown, but because of possible negative associations with the terrorist group, opted to change its name to 3 Thirty Three Downtown.

Whether media outlets switch to referring to the terrorist group as IS remains to be seen, but, as Schmidt says, the issue doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.