One Utah

I had a time warp experience yesterday. My husband, younger daughter and I all had lunch at Lamb’s Cafe downtown. Lamb’s Cafe is the oldest restaurant in Salt Lake City, established in 1919. I love eating there because the dark and heavy interior, combined with the old-fashioned booths and tablecloths and even the rack of [...]

As part of an earlier discussion, Caveat asked:
“How do we steer our ponderous educational contraption towards a more humane and less fundamentalist, path?”
With regard to public education, it’s important to understand that there is a swath of the American public that distrusts public education. To these folks, education is problematic because it teaches things [...]

Chances are good that a gay Utah teen was thrown out of his house by his parents today.  His parents, believing that being gay is sinful, wrong, a choice, and that his just going through a phase, are comforting themselves by reminding themselves that being gay is “un-natural.”  Safe within a system of prejudiced beliefs, [...]

Over at mydd, Matt has a great post about unions.
I’m quoting his entire first paragraph because it strikes me as so very right:
Whenever I spend time with people in unions, I get a very different picture of what this country looks like.  The political establishment spends a fair amount of time theorizing about messaging and how [...]

What does the Utah legislature’s annual attack on queer students have to do with a fight in Arkansas to remove books from school libraries? The answer is everything.
Yet again, the rocket scientists in the legislature have decided that gay-straight alliances must be bad for students and have decided to write a law that would [...]

This appeared in my email box today as part of a mass emailing (portions of it are omitted):
Standard of Liberty Foundation

Dear Friends,
Protect Minors from Gay Clubs in Schools
The Utah legislature is taking up a bill about gay clubs in schools. Tomorrow, Tuesday, January, 23, 2006, the Utah House Education committee will be meeting to consider [...]

Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I Have a Dream”
delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C

Pam has what may be the final words on the decision of the Mass. State assembly to allow a vote on marriage equality.
. . . with the character of people like [State Sen Sue] Tucker, would it have been fine with her to let “the people” vote on whether I must sit at the back [...]

So it’s New Year’s Eve. Most people are either celebrating, looking back on the year past and looking forward to the coming year.
I’m watching - for the first time in quite a while - the 1972 film What’s Up Doc? In the tradition of the screwball comedy of the 30s, it takes a [...]

HT to Pam’s House Blend.
The Boy Scouts of America, specifically their San Diego chapter, are spewing more bullshit about their right to use public property and discriminate against members of the public.
A few years ago, the Boy Scouts of America went to great lengths to convince the Supreme Court that allowing atheists and gay people [...]

Courtesy of UNICEF (via Amanda at pandagon).
It doesn’t get any clearer than this:
World leaders know that human development is stunted by entrenched discrimination and injustice. Yet although 27 years have elapsed since CEDAW was adopted – and despite the fact that the convention has received 184 ratifications, accessions and successions by States parties – millions [...]

My first grandson entered the world on Sunday. I’m elated…..and worried at the same time. Elated over this new chapter in our lives, and worried because of the color of his skin. He is half peruvian (indigenous) and about 12% Portugese, with other stuff mixed in. He has a “brown” [...]