The now infamous “Patriots For A Moral Utah” group played one of the most elaborate hoaxes on Utah the state has ever seen. Claiming to be the new America Forever or Eagle Forum, the group announced a citizen’s initiative which would require LGBT residents to either enter therapy and convert to heterosexuality or by loaded onto a train and be shipped off to San Francisco.
Backing the group up was an incredibly thourough and well-laid out bill, adding to the plausibility of the initiative. The story was picked up by Joe.My.God and the entire nation seemed to go crazy on it for a day. That in itself I think makes the satire a success, as it got people to stand up and do something, even if just for a day. What makes this story so scary is that even though they paralleled the 3rd Reich, it was still believable! Everyone still thought it could happen.
Today the group launched their website, utahfairsolution.com. The site continues the farce, but the activists also included a personal message on one of the pages outlining their full intent and reasons of why they chose to go on such a creative route. You know.. I say bravo. Well done for standing up and doing something that got people talking, even if it was a little unorthodox!
A group calling itself “The Patriots For A Moral Utah” held a press conference this afternoon calling for a “Fair Solution” to the issue of homosexuals in Utah. Speculation is flying fast as to whether this is an absolute crazy-right wing idea, or political satire. Below is their initial press release, provided by Joe.My.God
Patriots For A Moral Utah are pleased to announce a press conference tomorrow, at which time we will announce a new bill which outlining a solution to the problem of homosexuality in Utah. In the past 5 years it has become increasingly difficult and troublesome for the stead-fast and moral citizens of Utah to live their lives and their faith in peace, while the homosexuals continually force their choices and behaviors on us. This new legislation, titled the “Utah Fair Solution,” will offer a peaceful but effective end to the tribulation in our blessed state. Despite promises from the homosexual activists to be out in force at the press conference, our President Nora Young has scheduled the announcement for 1pm in the Capitol Rotunda (March 8th). Please Join us.
Sincerely;
Paul Jackson
Public Relations
Patriots For A Moral Utah
pauljackson2000@gmail.com
At the press conference, Nora Young announced that their citizen’s initiative will force LGBT citizens to either enter therapy and convert to heterosexuality, or the state will provide amtrak train tickets for them to head off to San Francisco.
Look, I’m torn on the legitimacy of this. So here’s my thought.. if this is real, SCREW you moronic, idiotic, dream-land living bigots. You don’t have a chance in hell.However, if this is political theatre.. AWESOME hahahahahaha. Utah has been rampant with ugly and pointless message bills this session and it’s about time someone stood up and made a farce of it.
When the “compromise” first started rolling out, Utahns were told that a year-long study would be included to show legislators just what type of discrimination was happening in the reddest-of-red states. But Senate President Waddoups and Senator Neiderhauser decided it wasn’t a good idea. Taking the initiative, Equality Utah has announced that they will be launching a study of their own in an attempt to show our legislators what is happening to their constituents! I applaud this effort and encourage anyone inside of Utah to take the quick survey!
Taylorsville – On Sunday, a group of LGBT activists from PRIDE In Your Community went door to door in Taylorsville UT, including Senate President Michael Waddoups’ door.
The group met at 11am at a local Junior High School where they made roughly 30-40 home-made Valentines cards. They then selected Waddoups’ neighborhood to visit, and went door to door through his neighborhood spreading a simple message, “Hi, we’re volunteering for the LGBT Community and we wanted to wish you a happy Valentines Day!” The hope was that through even such a simple act, citizens of Utah will start seeing their LGBT neighbors for who they are: people. Whether you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer or straight, we are all human beings and we all deserve to find and feel as much love as we can. Happy Valentines Day!
If you want to learn more about PRIDE In Your Community Or Get Involved, Click Here.
SLC – Yesterday, 65 gay rights protesters gathered at the Utah State Capitol building to protest threats made by Senate President Michael Waddoups against the LGBT community if they speak up. So in their response, the LGBT activists did just that.. they sit down and shut up.
I feel a little weird covering this protest as I was the organizer, but let’s just struggle through together shall we? The protest started at 4pm in the afternoon, and activists completely filled and blocked the east staircase of the capitol building. But instead of chants, the protesters wore white handkerchiefs around their mouths to symbolically comment on Waddoups’ statement. The sit in lasted an hour and a half, which offered plenty of visibility as lawmakers, their aids and lobbyists had to walk by on their way home for the day.
Things came close to getting ugly though, as one Republican Party member (non-elected official) was overheard joking to a reporter that “the mouth gags must be to keep the cocks out of their mouths.” Several protesters, including myself, spoke to the man but he made some very sugar-coated responses before walking away.
SLC – Senate President Michael Waddoups has come under heavy fire over the last week since he released a statement with a thinly-veiled threat telling the LGBT
UT Senate President Michael Waddoups
community to be quiet. Now he’s released a new statement trying to backpedal, while issuing the threat all over again!
Last night on the Senate’s blog, Waddoups claimed that “Reports of my willingness to censor people have been greatly exaggerated,” and that he encourages dialogue between the LGBT community and the rest of Utah. But in the same post, he also says he wants “activists in this cultural divide to avoid behavior that would polarize.” Ok, so let’s see.. between last week and last night the LGBT community and gay rights activists have been told to avoid “offensive behavior that would push the legislature to take action against the LGBT community” and to avoid “behavior that would polarize.” Sounds like he just wants everyone to play nice right? Wrong.
Let’s not kid ourselves, virtually every advancement in the gay / lesbian / bi / transgender movement has stemmed from radical action focused on bringing attention and pressure on government leaders. Nothing can ever be accomplished in a civil rights movement without drastic, poignant outcries from a community which no one would ever hear about otherwise. This is the time to step up and show Waddoups, Neiderhauser and Buttars and all others trying to steal our rights that we are here and will never be silenced. If nothing else, never let it be said that the Queers are not proud of who we are and will always fight for what is rightfully ours!
If you’re in Utah, attend the LGBT Community Forum tonight at 7pm at the UofU! You will have a chance to let your voice be heard and learn about upcoming events and suggest actions of your own! More info on that here.
SLC – With the controversial “compromise” between the pro-human rights legislators and the extremist right-wing hanging in the balance, a closed-door meeting between leading Republican Senators ended with a slap in the face to Utah’s LGBT community.
Last week, Representative Christine Johnson and Senator Stephenson announced a joint bill saying that no pro or anti gay legislation would be run this year by either side, and a committee would be assigned to study the necessity of anti-discrimination laws over the coming year. Call it an olive branch to Utah’s ultra-conservative lawmakers, a way for them to finally recognize the suffering of their constituents while still saving face by claiming that they were unaware of the problems in Utah before the committee delivered their report.
But now, Republicans have denied even that. In an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune, Senate President Michael Waddoups announced that they would hold up their end of no anti gay legislation this session, but that he saw no need for a committee to look into anything this upcoming year. On top of that, he threatened the gay community against speaking up, saying any “offensive activities” would push the Republicans into drafting legislation against the LGBT community.
Um… excuse me?? The queer community in Utah is one of the most oppressed in the country, being one of the few states that does not even afford housing or workplace protections to its’ citizens. There’s barely a handful of supportive legislators on Capital Hill supporting their basic rights and he wants the gay community to shut up and fall in line? Their strategy is clear, Republicans are in essence buying themselves a free-pass for the year from the constant barrage of negative press for their dark-age views, while giving nothing in return.
Now, the LGBT community of Utah is rising and coming together again. Enough. We have had it with our state constantly spitting on us, of teaching our children that they have no human worth just because they’re born differently. We are thrown from our parents’ homes, shunned from our churches and communities, fired from our jobs, evicted from our homes, denied every possible right to our partners and now are told our suffering isn’t even worth taking a deeper look at.
Enough. We’re sick of being the whipping-boy for those law makers who care nothing that thousands of their constituents are being persecuted. Sit Down, Shut Up and Fall In Line? Never.
UT – Speculation is flying fast and thick in Utah’s LGBT community right now. Is the agreement by our Legislators to not run any gay-rights bills this year in return for no anti-gay bills and an independent commission a good thing? Or are they just backing down from the fight?
State Representative Christine Johnson
Last week, State Representative Christine Johnson and Senator Ben McAdams announced that they had reached a compromise with the conservatives on the hill like Senator Howard Stephenson. In return for our community not running any gay-rights bills this year, the anti-human right’ers would not run any of their proposed 5 bills which would make it illegal for cities or municipalities in Utah to provide any of their own protections – forcing everything to go through Capital Hill. According to Equality Utah, the 5 bills from the conservative side would have (among other things) stripped away any chance of housing and workplace protections state-wide, including a reversal of Salt Lake City and County’s newly granted protections. Also included in the compromise is the use of an interim committee over the next year, which has been charged with evaluating the need for such protections in the state. Next year, during the 2011 legislative session, the committee will make a recommendation to the lawmakers on whether or not these protections are needed, based off of their findings.
But now some in the local LGBT community are speaking out against the compromise, saying that pro-LGBT lawmakers are failing in their duties to fight for their constituents rights. Local resident and gay-rights supporter Jodene Rudolf is not in favor of the compromise, saying “I cannot help but think of it as a slap in the face of what is right and just. The good fight should continue and we should just fight harder..Yes, it is tiring to face defeat time after time. But if we retreat from the battlefield won’t the other side advance its objective again and again anyway?”
But Equality Utah and Rep Johnson say this compromise provides an enormous open-door for the queer community. “This [compromise] gives us a big opportunity this year” says Brandie Balken, Executive Director of Equality Utah. “We have a whole year to do outreach and help educate both our lawmakers as well as our fellow citizens.”
But what about those of us in the community who are not part of an official advocacy group like Equality Utah? Where does this leave us? Well according to Rep
Equality Utah Exec. Director Brandie Balken
Johnson, our efforts are key to the success of this deal. “We need our community to step up to the plate this year,” she says, and it’s true. The community is needed to speak up at public hearings, committee meetings and most importantly to their straight neighbors and co-workers. This compromise has the possibility of being the greatest thing to ever happen to the queer community in Utah. We have one whole pressure-free year to tell our stories, to help our neighbors and elected officials understand what we go through on a daily basis. We can talk politics or religion all day long, but the most important and effective thing we could ever do is put a face to who we are. The LGBT community suffers horrors that very few other communities have ever even imagined, and if history has taught us anything it’s that once people see us and understand what we go through, that’s when we gain our greatest allies and the writing on the wall starts to get a little revision.
As Reed Cowan will tell you, “Every life has a story, every story has a lesson and every lesson has the power to change the world.” I pledge to do all I can this next year, I hope you join me.
UPDATE: A word from State Representative Christine Johnson:
SLC – In an announcement from Capitol Hill today, Utah legislators announced that in return for ultra-conservatives law-makers not passing a law outlawing all non-discrimination ordinances state wide, pro-human legislators will agree to not run any gay rights bills this year.
Since Salt Lake City and County passed their historic ordinances this past year banning discrimination against LGBT people in housing or employment, some nut-job elected officials (spurned on by Paul Mero and Gayle Ruzicka) have been pushing a “pre-emptive” strike against the gay community by making those laws and any others like them illegal. But now after intense negotiations from some of the heroes in the legislature like Senator Ben McAdams and Representative Christine Johnson, the legislature has agreed to a two-party “stand down.” This means that while Buttars and his stooges will agree to not pass the pre-emptive bills, our side also agrees to not try to pass any gay rights bills this year.
But where does that leave us? Doesn’t that just mean we will face the same fight next year and we’ve just pushed it off for now? Apparently one of the stipulations of the stand down is that over the next year the state will launch a program similar to the what the Human Rights Commission ran for Salt Lake City, a comprehensive report on whether basic protections for Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender are needed.
So will this be a good thing? The bill is being co-sponsored by Representative Christine Johnson and Senator Stephenson, two unlikely partners as they sit on far opposites of their ideals. The committee will allow “for some breathing room, and to prevent any rash decisions of either side” they say. The 3 main LGBT bills this year were Johnson’s anti-discrimination bill, Senator McAdams Wrongful Death bill, and Rep Chavez-Houck’s Adoption legislation. Although unfortunately, all three were almost guaranteed to fail yet again.
“This will provide for some learning experience” Christine Johnson says, “I’m sick of seeing my bills shot down in committee every year and perhaps this will provide some insight as to why.” But what happens if the committee comes back next year and says that the non-discrimination ordinances are necessary but Majority leaders like Chris Buttars still quashes them? “Well that will open up things to a lot of class lawsuits” says Rep Johnson, “because at that point all the evidence is there and they won’t have any legs to stand on to shoot the [bills] down.”
SLC- According to insiders behind Sundance the the Utah State Legislature, several months ago top legislators offered to have a resolution read on the floor of the Senate thanking Sundance for all it does for Utah and the millions of dollars it brings to our economy every year. Then because of gay rights, it never happened.
Back in December, two leading Utah Senators approached the heads of Sundance and offered to pass the resolution thanking them on the first day of the 2010 Legislative session. Sundance was, of course, thrilled as the money that rolls in every year from the film festival is one of the largest contributors to the local Utah economy. Then, the senators came back in the beginning of January and made a threat: Pull the film “8: The Mormon Proposition” or we won’t do the resolution. Sundance’s response: Stick it.
My extreme congratulations to Sundance Film Festival and Robert Redford for not cowing to prejudice of our state’s theocracy!
"Eric, trying to have this conversation (lgbt rights) with you is ultimately like trying to teach a pig to dance, it just annoys the pig. So Eric, sorry to annoy you."
-Paul Mero, The Sutherland Institute.
PRIDE In Utah! 