One Utah

With time to enshrine their bigotry in law running short, our state legislators are getting worried they won’t be able to tell gay folks “You suck.”
SB299 (sub one or two I don’t remember which) is trundling its way through the state legislature. In what looks like a straight party line vote, the [...]

What had been going along as a relatively boring, technocratic session has become the traditional legislative freak show thanks to Chris Buttars and the homophobes of the Republican majority. Frankly, the majority of Utah legislators are just plain old fashioned anti-gay bigots. They can dress it up in all the pretty language they [...]

Over at Orcinus, Dave takes on the ongoing effort of Republicans and conservatives to convince the world that they’re really not racists at all - history recent and not be damned. Dave writes:
It’s been kind of amusing watching conservatives reposition themselves on racial issues in anticipation of their upcoming electoral battle with Barack Obama, [...]

IOW, it’s business as usual on the Hill.
While I’m at it, I’d like to take a moment and thank Strom Buttars for bringing his usual nasty little self out on public display for the people and making what was a boring and technocratic session into yet another nasty gay-bashing fest. FWIW, Chris [...]

Over at KSL, there are many defending Buttars’ bigotry using finely honed apologetics.
I’m all for giving one the benefit of the doubt once, maybe twice. But I know Senator Buttars. He IS an unapologetic bigot and will readily admit it to anyone (privatly) as he did with me one day over the phone. [...]

It’s almost impossible to make fun of Chris Buttars - given his level of obvious stupidity, irony, sarcasm and satire fall short of the embarrassing reality of this bigoted little man who likes the rush of power he feels when people call him “Senator.”
In Buttars latest move to become the poster boy for bigots, he [...]

Rebecca Walsh is rapidly becoming my favorite local newsperson.  Her article in today’s Trib is yet another perfect example of her ability to accurately record the seriously messed up politics of Utah.
Walsh writes:
As is so often the case, Salt Lake City is acting out, testing the bounds of this big conservative family we like to [...]

Someone in the State Senate should make sure he’s on his medication. I mean seriously, he’s an embarrassment - that someone this monumentally stupid keeps getting elected should give pause to the voters in his district.
From today’s Trib:
“I’m for the concept of the bill, but we don’t want outside organizations coming into schools [...]

It’s impossible to attend the Utah State Legislature year after year as I have without developing a sense of cynicism. The majority of Utah’s legislators strike me as well meaning but useless when it comes to actually effecting changing. The few commonsense proposals that actually make it to the floor are usually killed [...]

Over the weekend, I happened to catch a documentary called Clear Cut: Philomath, OR, on the Sundance channel, about the bizarre series of events in a small Oregon town that somehow became a short term front on the culture war.
The documentary of course had a series of interviews. One of the interviewees was a [...]

If you are using public facilities, you cannot deny membership to any member of the public.  Allow me to expand - if you are using a tax supported building to hold your meetings and you are paying a symbolic annual rent of $1, which means the taxpayers are effectively footing the entire bill for your [...]

In his lousy speech yesterday, Mitt Romney said of people like me, “It is as if they’re intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They’re wrong,”
He was talking about people who would exclude religion from public institutions and apparently, create their own religion.
Ignoring the stupidity of that statement for [...]