Two No-No's

Somebody posted this news story in the TeachTheFacts Yahoo group this morning, and for some reason it's been running through my head all day. Not just the story, but ... there's something above and beyond it.

OK, you know that Utah is the most conservative state in the US. One hundred thirty five percent of the voters there voted for G. W. Bush in 2004. So you're not really all that surprised to find out that a Utah state senator is on a crusade to stop the formation of Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in the Utah schools.

Here's the lead from the Salt Lake Tribune:

Sara Hardcastle, the president of Hillcrest High School's Gay Straight Alliance club, says people like Utah Sen. Chris Buttars scare her.

Buttars, a West Jordan Republican, is vowing to push a bill through the upcoming Legislature to outlaw gay-straight clubs in Utah high schools. "I will prevail," he says.

"We are being targeted again," says Hardcastle, a senior who has been in the Midvale high school club - known as GSA - for more than two years. "We are always having a finger pointed at us for doing something wrong - and it's just the opposite. We're doing something right."

By the way, the "we" to which Hardcastle refers is GSA's majority of straight members that includes her.

After five years of controversy and lawsuits over gay-straight clubs at East High School, the Salt Lake School Board settled further legal entanglements in 2000 by allowing students to form extracurricular clubs focused on homosexual issues.

But Buttars says the clubs, which exist in 40 Utah high schools, violate state law and promote a sexuality that most Utahns find "perverted." The schools are in effect sponsoring the clubs to avoid costly lawsuits.

State statute allows a school board to deny access to organizations that encourage criminal or delinquent conduct, promote bigotry or "involve human sexuality." Gay-straight clubs under fire - Lawmaker pushes ban on school alliances, vows: 'I will prevail'

So, wow, you can't even have, like, a car-jacking club, or a holdup club, in Utah. At least at school. You have to go off-campus for that. And that condition about "human sexuality," I can just see some Smart Guy thinking that was a great idea. Sheesh, why do these guys want the government to control everything that people do? These are wild and wacky times we live in.

"What do you think they're talking about at their meetings?" Buttars says of the gay-straight clubs. "If you've got a chess club what are you talking about? If you're in a gay-lesbian club, you're talking about sexuality."

Stan Burnett, director of youth programs at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center of Utah says club members and advisers meticulously avoid discussing sexuality to avoid running afoul of the law, much as biology and health teachers carefully navigate Utah's laws on sex education.

"We're careful. We don't want to cross the line," Hardcastle says. Members talk about intolerance, teen alienation, and destructive stereotypes. "I don't think we've ever had [sexual orientation] come up in discussion."

But Buttars says: "That's another lie of the gay groups."

Yeah, you can recognize the gay groups -- they're the ones with their pants on fire.

OK, that's all interesting, sure, a Mormon politician in Utah doesn't like gay and straight students to have clubs together. (His religion is listed on his bio HERE, in case you wondered.)

But here's what I'm thinking.

There was some talk last year, several news stories pointing out that the Mormons had more than a passing interest in laws regulating gay marriage. If such a law were contested in a certain way, it could open the door for the legalization of polygamy, which is a Mormon tradition that still continues in the deserts of Utah, Arizona, and nearby states. Of course those marriages are not legal, and I imagine the people involved would sleep a little easier if they knew the sheriff wasn't looking for them.

Now -- how do you feel about plural marriage? I mean, really.

Let me tell you what I think: I don't see it. For me, one wife is plenty. How you can love two or three or more women, how you can manage to live together without jealousy and craziness, I just don't understand.

But the fact is, I couldn't care less if some guy wants to marry a bunch of women. If he mistreats them or whatever, different story, I'm not talking about that. If he wants to have a gang of wives, and his culture accepts it, and he can talk some women into the deal, it doesn't bother me in the least.

Not surprisingly, that's exactly the way I feel about gay marriage, too. Wouldn't want to do it, don't care if somebody else does. Hope they're happy.

Most of the anti-gay bull-oney these days ends up quoting some Bible verses. Certain groups read the Bible in such a way that the worst thing you can do is to fall in love with someone of your own sex. Other biblical prohibitions are ignored (how many of the CRC's leadership are divorced and remarried, do you think?), but the Bible absolutely tells these characters that they need to do everything in their power to make life on earth a living hell for any and all gay people.

And this polygamy thing. The Bible is full of it, and never says anything against it. Didn't some of those old-time guys have like hundreds of wives? Never mind a bunch of concubines.

Really -- reading through the Bible you wonder why the Jerry Falwells and James Dobsons of the world are whining about the "murder of Christmas," and ignoring the "murder of a man's right to marry a bunch of women." They shouldn't just accept polygamy, they should insist on it. You'd think.

I am just finding it interesting to compare the two no-no's, homosexuality and polygamy. To insult the gays, these religious nuts pass laws defining marriage as something between one man and one woman, but that's not the biblical definition, clearly. They are re-defining marriage, and in a way that seems to go against the teachings of the Bible.

There is, in all of this, a whiff of hypocrisy, did you notice?