One Utah

In our society, almost all minority groups face a complicated choice between being fully integrated and between self-segregation. At one time, women’s colleges were the only avenue for women to pursue higher education, same for the historically black colleges. Catholic schools were organized since many public schools openly indoctrinated students into protestantism. […]

Last night, KUED re-aired the locally produced documentary Outside, about the lives and experiences of four homeless youth in Salt Lake City.
I know there are homeless people in Salt Lake City. I know there are homeless teens and young adults in Salt Lake City. I’ve advocated for better services for the homeless. […]

In Utah, sexuality seems to forever be waiting to emerge from the shadows into a dark and torrential scandal. In 2008 we have had at least three brouhahas - the Blue Boutique and the teacher in Herriman and the nude cell phone pictures of teens in Davis County. And some absurd public pronouncements […]

It seems that the good folks of Herriman have their panties in a bunch over a teacher answering students’ questions. The teacher is apparently facing all kinds of consequences and Carl Wimmer (Republican of course) is drafting a bill to have criminal consequences for teachers who don’t lie to their students about sexuality as […]

The debacle of the clash of civilizations in the Texas raids upon the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints continues past the point of severe justice. Whatever Samuel Huntington thinks, no one wins such wars.
Savagery exists now, played out with the goading of the news media, in 24/7 mode, driven to make news of the most lurid […]

Some months back, Hugo had a post in the great feminist blogswarm about hair. The basic situation: a group of feminist bloggers found themselves in a complex debate about the relative merits of removing or keeping one’s body hair.
Hugo posted on the debate then added his own interesting take here. […]

The Texas Polygamist raid is a PR disaster for the Mormon church.
Last night, Larry King did his best impression of a journalist and interviewed people who have left polygamy - all with the LDS Salt Lake temple in the background.  The repetition of LDS/Mormon and polygamist/polygamy is undoing decades of work by mainstream Mormons to present […]

I’ve added some text to expand on some ideas.  I’ve noted them.
The brouhaha in American Fork holds a morbid fascination for me. The American Fork PTSA invited a group to address their meeting and talk about the dangers of pornography. What they discovered they were going to get was a denunciation of glbt persons dressed […]

I’m having an extremely difficult time posting today. I just can’t seem to think clearly. I don’t know what’s up with that.
I’m avoiding the gym tonight. I know it’s lame excuse but it’s always so crowded on Mondays it’s almost not worth going. I know it’s a lame excuse.
Anyway, […]

Easter this year is the earliest easter since 1913.  Easter won’t be this early again for something like two centuries.  What that means is that we are nearing the end of Holy Week.  Holy Week is not an easy journey; it is a journey from Palm Sunday into the Passion; a journey from celebration to brutality […]

In the interest of management, I’ve closed the discussion below the “Dear Dwight” post - not because the discussion should stop but because it’s about to be pushed off the front page and the thread has gotten rather long and quite frankly I’m feeling pretty lazy.
Each of us brings a set of assumptions, experiences, ideas, and […]

The discussion about modesty and sexuality has me thinking about the complicated ways in which male anxiety - specifically about sexuality - plays itself out. Calls for modesty and events chastity balls are often called for in general terms but directed at women in practice; they are equally often called for in specifically gendered […]

You write something, post it, a few days later you move on and you basically forget it.  Then someday, often months later, someone brings it up again - sometimes even the person about whom you wrote.  It’s my favorite weird and wild thing about the internet.
Case in point, this morning while checking comments, I found a […]

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 […]

I’ve been thinking for a long about the issue of sexism in Utah politics. Jenny Wilson rightly pointed out that she was asked questions that none of her male counterparts were asked during the Mayor’s race. At the same time, Gayle Ruzicka is incredibly influential in Utah politics - sure, she’s nasty and […]

Over the weekend, I read a fascinating book - Frans De Waal’s, Our Inner Ape. De Waal, one of the few primatologists to really study bonobo’s in depth, argues in the book that humans, chimps and bonobos are extremely closely related and that studying the behavior of all three species leads to a […]

Via Feministing, I see a great article  by Sara Robinson about the changing dynamics of abortion. 
The gist of the article concerns the way in which medical termination of unwanted pregnancies (i.e. RU-486) is changing the way in which women receive and experience abortions, and is changing the locus of control over reproductive freedom - namely moving […]

I saw this reported on KSL and decided I had misunderstood. Apparently not. Tragically not. From the D-News, I see that a group of students from BYU and UVSC are making some downright pathetic demands of Gold’s gym.
They are demanding that the gyms get rid of R-rated or sexually explicit PG-13 movies […]

The conversation the other day in response to my post about the virginity fetish got me thinking about the oft-repeated statement one should wait for marriage before having sex. That statement contains within itself a set of assumptions that need examined about the “goodness” of married sex.

Today’s D-News has an op-ed piece by Warren Throckmorton extolling the virtues of virginity. Full of slippery logic and the casual assumption that not having sex is better than having sex, Throckmortion begins with a recounting of the story of Saint Nicholas that includes this nugget:
I also discovered that Saint Nicholas is a patron […]