NOTE TO UTAH LEGISLATURE --- DO NOT POSTURE! PASS LEGISLATION THAT WILL REALLY HELP PROMOTE FAMILY LIFE

I read in this evening’s Salt Lake Tribune that pro-gay groups will do service in Utah during LDS General Conference. It will not be long before freedom marches and freedom busses will be organized heading for Utah and living in Utah will become rather like living in Alabama and Mississippi in 1963.

I have been a member of the Republican Party since 1974. Even by the exalted standards of Utah Republican hypocrisy, the Legislature’s insults against same gender couples this year seem unusually cynical as a strategy of preserving family life and marriage.


QUOTATIONS FROM A RECENT SALT LAKE TRIBUNE ARTICLE AND MY COMMENTS:

ARTICLE: “In rejecting the latest measures, opponents painted being gay as a "choice" rather than an innate characteristic -- contrary to a broad consensus among psychological and medical experts.

ARTICLE: "Adoption is not a right, it's a privilege. Those who choose alternative lifestyles suffer the consequences because they can't naturally produce between them," said Representative Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem, who joined a 5-1 vote to defeat HB288. "Heterosexual couples who cohabit also face consequences because they choose not to marry."

MY COMMENTS: Representative Sandstrom’s logic is bogus. First, Common Law gives rights to cohabiting heterosexual couples. Second, some courts have assigned children in adoption to cohabiting couples.

ARTICLE: “And on the antidiscrimination bill, Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka made a similar case against adding sexual orientation to existing fair housing and employment laws.

"What we're talking about is choice -- someone's sexual choice," she told a House panel. "Why would we put into law someone's sexual choice? … This is not the right thing to do."

MY COMMENTS: plenty of heterosexual choices do get protection in the laws.

I would like to see Gayle Ruzicka say this five times fast without laughing: “I choose to engage in opposite-Gender attraction sexual activity.”

As if that is just another element we choose in life like the toppings on an ice cream sundae. I wonder how many heterosexuals — oops! excuse me — how many people in my families who engage in opposite-gender attraction made careful, studied, conscious decisions after studying the possibilities about the nature of their first experiences in the back seat of a Toyota.

In my family, the same gender couples proved less of a threat to marriage and family life than did some of my heterosexual relatives who (how shall we say?)” slept around with multiple partners, who indulged multiple drug addictions, who acted on violent urges.

Heterosexuals have done the most damage to American culture in general and marriage and family life in particular. Heterosexuals promoted vagueness and laxity in adoption laws, easy divorce, multiple sex partners, polygamy.


THE CALL TO ACTION

I suppose Senator Buttars has a right to speak out, of course -- but the audience, not he, decides whether he spoke unwisely.

If Utah's legislature really wants to improve preserve marriage and family life, then it should stop knocking over same gender strawmen and do the follow in 2010

■ strengthen antidiscrimination laws in housing and employment

■ promote universal health care with one payer.

■ require insurance companies to cover all sorts of treatments for both physical and mental illness.

■ discourage consumption of things that disrupt families like tobacco, illicit drugs, alcohol. As long as the State of Utah taxes tobacco and alcohol, it will not get serious about discouraging its general use.

■ legislate to increase salaries of workers and decrease CEO salaries / bonuses.