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Show BEING GAY IN UTAH For men and women practicing an ‘alternative lifestyle, "Utah is a pretty mtolerant state. By Alexandra L. Woodruff On the night of February 7, 1999, three men waited outside a well-known gay club in Salt Lake City. When two men walked out of the Sun, the trio, Brian E. Hitt, 25, Scott Presley, 22, and Jason Millard, 25, allegedly started verbally taunting the men and then physically attacked them. Presley hit one of the victims several times in the chest and face, Millard punched the other man in the face. The same three are also charged with approaching another bar patron ona different day and asking him, "Are you a faggot?" The victim jumped in his car, locked the doors and the gang started pounding on the car. The man jumped out of his car, ran back to the bar and called the police. According to police reports, one of the attackers later admitted, he had no explanation for the beating and they were just out for a good time. The three pleaded guilty to assault charges. . This is not the first time attackers have chosen their victims because of sexual orientation and it probably won't be the last. | bunch of fags and dykes, who had more issues likes me," remembers Wood. "For a bunch of white, middle-class boys, it was a total thrill to finally be a part of a counter-culture." The Mormon Church tells its members to "love the sinner, hate the sin.". The Church believes homosexuals can and should be changed. Since the 1970s, the Church has tried different therapies to "cure" gayness. It has tried programs that include fasting, praying, hypnosis and even aversion therapy, where those who want to change their sexual orientation are induced to vomit or electrically shocked when an erotic picture of someone of the same sex is viewed. BYU has a support group called Evergreen, which tries to purge students of sexual feelings toward the same sex. Wood told his bishop of his sexual orientation, but didn’t attend the Evergreen meetings. "The rhetoric wasn’t a source of my guilt. I knew they were wrong, I knew that being gay was okay and I knew that what the LDS Church thinks about gay and lesbian people was an absolute lie, but what kept me silent was their rejection,” Wood recalls. In Utah, reported physical attacks on gays and lesbians are rare; the state of Utah uses less confrontational ways of trying to squelch the quickly emerging culture of people who choose to live an open and honest homosexual lifestyle. Since the mid-1990s, Utah has tried to ban their free speech, their right to meet and even their right to adopt children. But ironically, this active anti-gay campaigning has done more to solidify gay rights because a few vocal activists refuse to back down on such blatant violations of civil rights. "Some people want to deny or force the reality out of existence. Progress goes basically in one direction... You have to believe you are on the right side of history and keep plugging away.” Stephen Clark. Legal Director. Utah ACLU "It’s the:last gasp of the establishment; we're facing a very interesting time in Utah and across the country as lesbians and gays become more visible and society faces the decision on how to deal with that reality," said Stephen Clark, the legal director at the Utah chapter of the ACLU, "Some people want to deny or force the reality out of existence. Progress goes basically in one direction. There can be backlashes and setbacks, but this is the civil xg GVH BATS SOHC ESBS : rights movement of our time; you have to believe you are on the right side of history and keep plugging away." bi CHOOSE THE RIGHT The dominant religion here, like most organized religions, has been less than accepting of open, gay lifestyles. The LDS church actively campaigns to make sure gay marriage is not legalized. In February 1994, the LDS First Presidency asked its members to "appeal to legislators, judges and other officials to preserve the purposes and sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman." When Hawaii and Alaska tried to pass initiatives to legalize marriage between same-sex couples, the church became involved and helped defeat the measures. Protesters in support of gay rights showed up last fall at the LDS Church Conference. Wood finally left BYU, moved to SLC and started working on women’s and gay rights issues. And despite the opposition, an open, gay lifestyle isn’t that difficult in Utah’s capital city. Right now, California is trying to pass Proposition 22, titled the "Limit on Marriage." The initiative would limit legal marriages to heterosexual couples. Last June, the church lives quietly." sent letters to 740,000 members asking them to support the initiative. The Roman Catholic Church and the California Southern Baptists have also come out in support of Proposition Utah, than gay men die of HIV. But despite these official stances, Utah has a thriving gay culture and community that won't sit and quietly watch their rights taken away. Last fall during LDS conference, 200 protests gathered outside the Salt Lake Temple for a peaceful gathering to oppose the California’s Prop. 22. Jared Wood and his partner Darrin Hobbs helped organize the protest and are two of the most vocal and active gay rights supporters in the state. They started a group called Utahns for Fairness, a group created to protest the Church’s support of the "Limit on Marriage" initiative. "T would love to see gays and lesbians refuse to pay their taxes until our relationships were recognized in the same manner as heterosexuals’, Id love to see them prosecute us all, I’d love to see them try to lock us up," Wood said. The pair, also, helped found the Gay and Lesbian Political Action Committee (GALPAC), a political action committee that raises money for political campaigns and helps promote gay and gay-friendly campaigns. But their political involvement was not a future they imagined for themselves growing up. Hobbs grew up a Southern Baptist and notes the attitudes between that culture and Utah’s predominant culture in Utah are small; yet they differ in the way they approach gay issues. "The difference between the Baptists and the Mormons is the Baptists have no problem looking you in the face and saying you're a piece of crap; Mormons will hide behind platitudes and words of love, while stabbing you in the back," Hobbs says. Wood grew up Mormon in a small town in New Mexico. When it was time for college, Wood chose to go to BYU in Provo. He was still in the closet, but knew he was gay. He says he went there because there were so many jokes about the school’s well-established gay population. When he arrived, the rumors were confirmed; he got involved in the gay community which was dealing with the same religious issues. "Going to BYU was about safety from my parents and a place to come out around a . . According to Hobbs, "It’s fairly easy to live here, but I think that it also might be part of the problem; the dominant culture is so subversive that it is easy for people to live their They also point out that more women in Utah die of domestic violence annually in "We're not trying to paint ourselves as victims. Darrin and I are white middle-class men and our risk of being assaulted and the kind of prejudice we deal with on a daily basis, I think, is very small compared to what people of color and women face daily in Utah," Wood says. MAKING WAVES There are two cases in Utalr that have had a national effect on gay rights. The first is the Salt Lake School District’s ban on non-curricular clubs in its schools and the second is the gag order the Nebo School District placed on lesbian teacher, Wendy Weaver. "We've had more than our share of cases affecting the rights of gays and lesbians that have a national impact," Clark of the ACLU observed. . Weaver had taught at Spanish Fork High School since 1979, but when she divorced her husband and moved in with her partner, Rachel Smith, her job was in jeopardy. The district made her sign a gag order that would not let her discuss her lesbian relationship to anyone, in or out of school. She was also removed as the girls’ volleyball coach at the school. Weaver challenged the case and won and, ironically, the district’s efforts to silence Weaver did exactly what the district didn’t want. The district was forced to offer her the coaching position back and remove the gag order. It solidified her rights to live an open, gay life and the court case is now hailed as one of the most important federal decisions protecting teachers. - “Wendy can finally live her life the way she has always wanted to because she is out from under the persecution and the professional and personal attacks she had to suffer for a long time,” said Clark, who helped represent the case. Clark also helped represent the case of East High School students who tried to start a group called the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). During the 1995-96 school year, a group of students wanted to form a club that would discuss and deal with sexual orientation issues. The district clamped down on the group and tried to stop it from meeting. The students fought back, staged a school walk-out and lobbied for their cause. |