Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Update on Utah bill to ban Gay-Straight Alliances

The Utah legislature is in session now and I just read an article in The Deseret News that talked about a bill sponsored by Sen. Chris Buttars which he hopes will put an end to Gay-Straight Alliances in Utah high schools. He's not even a representative of Utah County where the Provo High School Gay-Straight Alliance was formed, so I don't know why he felt it was his obligation to get this law passed, besides being a self-righteous bigot.

Here's part of the article:

A bill to tighten controls on clubs at Utah high schools passed out of the Senate Education Committee on Monday, prompting tears from students who fear the bill would effectively shut down Gay-Straight Alliances in public schools.
SB97, sponsored by Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, directs schools to deny clubs if their charter or activities would encourage criminal conduct, promote bigotry or involve human sexuality.
Buttars altered the definition of human sexuality Monday to a toned-down version saying any club "advocating or engaging in sexual activity outside of legally recognized marriage or forbidden by state law." Previously, the bill also disallowed "self-labeling" by students as to sexual orientation and "disclosing attitudes or personal conduct" regarding sexual orientation.
But Buttars made it clear to the committee, which voted 4-2 in favor of advancing the bill to the Senate, that Gay-Straight Alliances were still a primary targets of his legislation. Those groups, he said, are indoctrinating students with a "new morality."
"It's pulling down the traditional pillars of morality," Buttars said. "If you say there is no morality because we can do anything we want to do sexually, that's not something we want to do in America."
Buttars, who had missed weeks of the session due to an undisclosed illness, also had a parent speak about how his niece was "targeted, recruited and indoctrinated" by a Gay-Straight Alliance.


What an awful man! He's trying to ban a support group for gay people in high schools because he feels like it would ruin America. Isn't that a violation of church and state and also discriminating against a group of people? I hope that if this bill does pass that somehow the club will be able to continue at Provo High. We'll wait and see.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"If you say there is no morality because we can do anything we want to do sexually, that's not something we want to do in America." -- Mr. Buttars

And that's exactly what Gay-Straight Alliances are for: to teach people how to have sex and to promote it.

I can't believe there are people who still associate the gay support issue with promoting immorality, meaning advocating sex. Gays aren't out there to indoctrinate anybody. The GSA is there as a support to those who struggle, right?

There is no gay agenda.

Anonymous said...

There does, however, seem to be a straight one.

DCTwistedLife said...

Isn't that a violation of church and state and also discriminating against a group of people? I hope that if this bill does pass that somehow the club will be able to continue at Provo High. We'll wait and see.

Hopefully the bill WONT pass. If it did, they may be able to take it to the supreme court...or SOME court to have the law struck down. These people have to prove that they are teaching students about sexuality and how to DO things etc. But as far as I know, the GSA is simply a support group for gay kids. How is that so terrible? What's terrible is that they let straight people decide how gay people get to live, based on their constructed 'moral' code...which really isnt moral at all, its quite vicious.