Jon Huntsman Makes It Official

UTAH: Gay Rights Come To Ogden

Yesterday the city council of Ogden, Utah voted unanimously to approve an ordinance banning housing and employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Last week Ogden's mayor had vowed to veto an earlier 4-3 vote, but Pride In Utah reports that three of the city council members moved the tally to a veto-proof 7-0 after intense lobbying from local activists and the insertion of language protecting freedom of speech. The seventh-largest town in Utah, Ogden becomes the state's 12th municipality to approve a bill banning anti-gay discrimination.

The Official State Of Utah

Lawrence O'Donnell On Utah's State Gun

Utah GOP Rep Proposes Naming Browning Semi-Automatic The Official State Gun

Tea Party-backed GOP state Rep. Carl Wimmer wants the Browning semi-automatic to be named Utah's official state gun. This model Browning is very similar to the gun used in Arizona's massacre.

The bill to make the Browning M1911 the official gun breezed through a committee hearing this week and is scheduled to be debated by the full House as early as Wednesday. Republican Rep. Carl Wimmer said the state should have the gun as one of its state symbols to honor John Browning, a Utah native who invented it in 1911. "He invented a firearm that has defended American values and the traditions of this country for 100 years," Wimmer told the House Political Subdivisions Committee. The committee approved the bill to add a state gun on a 9-2 vote.

Next up: The official Utah state land mine! The official Utah state pipe bomb!

(Tipped by JMG reader Corey)

TENTHER: Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) Says Child Labor Laws Are Unconstitutional

Newly elected GOP Sen. Mike Lee (UT) says that federal child labor laws are unconstitutional because as per the Tenth Amendment, only laws expressly laid out in the Constitution are legal. Lee is part of the new class of "states rights" Congress members intent on overturning all federal legislation not mentioned in the Constitution.

UTAH: GOP State Sen. Chris Buttars Wants To Repeal Anti-Bullying Rules

Republican state Sen. Chris Buttars has introduced a bill that would repeal the Salt Lake City school board's recently instituted anti-bullying rules. Pride In Utah reports:

Speaking at a meeting for the anti-gay group Eagle Forum, Buttars said: “We’re in big trouble in our public education system. I didn’t realize how much until a month ago when I was asked to chair public education appropriations,” said Buttars. “We met and when we got done we were all so terrified we couldn’t believe it. This was right under our nose.” “By accepting that, there’s no God because he deals in absolutes,” said Buttars. “This is an entire program to bring America down and I want to tell you right now it’s well entrenched in Utah.” Other speakers at the Eagle Forum called the anti-bullying and non discrimination policies a “Socialist and Communist plot to take over children.”

Pride In Utah will stage a protest rally at the Utah Capitol Building on January 24th, the first day of the legislative session.

RELATED: We've heard from Buttars before. He has called the "sexual perversion" of homosexuality "the greatest threat to America I know of." Buttars also wants to eliminate the 12th grade because kids know everything they need by then. And in 2008 when referring a bill that would increase funding to minority school districts, he said, "This baby is black. It’s a dark, ugly thing."

UTAH: Gay Rights Come To Grand County

In a continuance of the march to full LGBT rights for small town and rural Americans, yesterday Grand County, Utah granted housing and employment protections to its gay and transgender residents. The Salt Lake Tribune reports:

That means one in four Utahns, living in 10 communities from Moab to Logan, are protected from discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Advocates for the statutes hope that groundswell of support will push the Utah Legislature to protect all Utahns. “Each of these local governments has set an example for their residents and for business owners and property owners,” said Brandie Balken, executive director of Equality Utah. “They’ve also set a good example for our Legislature.” Sen. Ben McAdams, D-Salt Lake City, plans to introduce a bill in the upcoming legislative session that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to existing housing and employment laws banning discrimination based on characteristics such as race, religion or national origin. Two-thirds of Utahns support such a law, according to a January poll by The Salt Lake Tribune.

Pride In Utah cautions that the GOP head of the Utah state Senate has hinted that his party may attempt to overturn local anti-discrimination laws by statewide edict. In the meantime the effort to institute a state version of ENDA in Utah continues.

UTAH: Parents Upset Over Gay Suicide Signs Posted Near Elementary School

Administrators and parents at a Utah elementary school are upset because a man who lives adjacent to the school has posted the above signs.

Leonard Ridley lives next to Art City Elementary in Springville. He recently posted three signs on his fence, facing the playground after he read news about the recent rash of gay suicides. "The signs of course say stop gay suicide, tell the truth, gays are born gay," Ridley said. "I realized at that point that I was in an enviable location in back of the school and this would be an opportunity to provide information to the children tat would be carried to the adults in their lives, to the teachers, to their parents in particular and carry information concerning homosexuals and homosexuality that would perhaps contradict with the mistaken ideas that they already had."

Saying that many parents had complained, school officials said that suicide was an inappropriate subject for elementary school students. The city has declared that the size of the signs exceed zoning codes and Ridley has agreed to post only one sign at a time.

(Tipped by JMG reader Alan)

HRC's Fred Sainz On Mormon Church's So-Called Change Towards Gays

Much noise is being made about the Mormon Church's so-called softer position on homosexuality. HRC's Fred Sainz went on MSNBC to talk about it, but Pride In Utah, who has read the new Mormon Handbook, says don't believe the hype.

Activists Interrupt Utah Gubernatorial Debate Over LGBT Teen Suicides

Pride In Utah reports that activists from a new group calling themselves Justice Vanguard interrupted last night's gubernatorial debate to demand candidates address the bullying and suicides of LGBT youth.

UTAH: Thousands Protest Anti-Gay Remarks By LDS Leader Boyd Packer

Thousands of protesters gathered in Salt Lake City's Temple Square last night to denounce remarks by LDS Apostle Boyd Packer, who called gay people "impure and unnatural."

Packer’s speech, delivered during the LDS Church’s 180th Semiannual General Conference, hit a nerve, protesters say, because it came after a string of gay teen suicides in the national news. Boys as young as 13 took their own lives after reportedly being bullied by their peers for being gay. On Thursday, protest organizers estimated that 4,500 people ringed the two downtown blocks that make up the LDS Church’s headquarters. Participants wore black, and some carried signs. Lying head to toe or sitting shoulder to shoulder, they encircled Temple Square two times. “Tonight, we are symbolic of all the children who have been killed by messages like Boyd K. Packer’s,” said organizer and Salt Lake City blogger Eric Ethington. “When you hear nothing from [church leaders] but that you are nothing but evil and you need to change the unchangeable nature of yourself, that is only a message kids can take for so long.”

LDS officials shrugged off the protest, merely noting that those thousands of angry people had a right to be there. No apology or retraction is expected from Packer.

Mormon Leader Rips "Immoral" Gays

So much for that LDS make-over.

Same-sex attraction can be overcome and any type of union other than marriage between a man and a woman is morally wrong, an LDS apostle told millions of Mormons on Sunday. “There are those today who not only tolerate but advocate voting to change laws that would legalize immorality, as if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God’s laws and nature,” Boyd K. Packer, president of the church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles, said in a strongly worded sermon about the dangers of pornography and same-sex marriage. “A law against nature would be impossible to enforce. Do you think a vote to repeal the law of gravity would do any good?” Some argue that “they were pre-set and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural,” he said. “Not so! Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember he is our father.”

(Via - Good As You)

Arizona's Copycats

The Washington Post tracks the states looking to copy Arizona's racist anti-immigrant law.

Lawmakers in Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah, which have already taken steps against illegal immigration, say that Arizona-style measures have a realistic chance of passing when their legislatures reconvene in 2011. The Obama administration sued Arizona in federal court Tuesday, charging that the state law usurps federal authority, would hamper immigration enforcement and would lead to police harassment of those who have no proof of lawful status. The government asked that a federal judge stop the law from taking effect July 29. Legislators in at least 17 other states introduced bills this year similar to the Arizona law, which allows officers to question anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. But most of those measures are not considered likely to be adopted or signed by governors. The political climate in Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah, however, improves the chances that state legislatures there could follow Arizona's lead in 2011.

Utah Executes Man By Firing Squad

Utah has carried out the wishes of convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner and executed him by firing squad. Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court refused a request to stay the execution.

Gardner, 49, is only the third person in 33 years to die by firing squad in the United States. He was killed at 12:20 a.m. MST (2:20 a.m. ET), a Corrections Department spokesman said. A hood was placed over Gardner's head and a paper target pinned to his chest. He was heavily restrained as a five-person firing squad took aim at the target and shot him, witnesses said. Journalists who witnessed the shooting said it happend quickly. One reporter said she noticed that Gardner moved after he was shot. "It was over pretty quickly," said Cheryl Worsley, a local radio reporter. "It was cleaner than I expected. It was fast. But he moved. He moved a little bit, and to some degree that bothers me." Outside the prison in Draper Utah, there was a candlelight vigil attended by members of Gardner's family.

As I mentioned here back in April, only two other persons have been executed by firing squad since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Both executions took place in Utah. The death penalty has been abolished in 98 countries.

Gary Gilmore's Eyes

A Utah judge has agreed to a prisoner's request that he be executed by firing squad. Two other prisoners have been executed by firing squad since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Both executions took place in Utah.

Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, was given the choice of being killed by lethal injection or shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles – a rarely used method of execution that harkens back to Utah's territorial history. "I would like the firing squad, please," Gardner told state court Judge Robin Reese after hearing his avenues for appeal appear to be exhausted. Gardner, 49, was sentenced to death for killing an attorney 25 years ago during a failed escape attempt and shootout. Defense attorney Andrew Parnes said he plans to quickly seek a stay of execution and appeal Reese's ruling to the Utah Supreme Court.

When the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty to be constitutional in 1976, the first prisoner to be be executed was two-time murderer Gary Gilmore. His 1977 execution by a Utah firing squad became the subject of Norman Mailer's Pulitzer-winning The Executioner's Song. British punk band The Adverts had a top ten hit later that year with Gary Gilmore's Eyes, which was written from the viewpoint of a man who realizes that his transplanted eyes had been donated by Gary Gilmore.

Utah Senate Delays Ryan White Act: "Doesn't Obamacare Pay For This?"

Yesterday the Utah Senate delayed approval of a long-running federal grant providing assistance to people with HIV, the Ryan White Act. Utah Senate president Michael Waddoups said coldly, "Doesn't Obamacare pay for this?"

The grant program is named after Ryan White, a teenage hemophiliac who died from AIDS complications in the 1980s after contracting the HIV virus during a transfusion to treat the blood disorder. "Doesn't Obamacare pay for this?" asked Waddoups, referring to the new health insurance reform package passed by Democrats in Congress and signed two weeks ago by President Barack Obama without a single Republican vote.Waddoups said he would not vote for the grant, which has never been questioned in previous years, until all his questions were answered. Waddoups noted that voicing his concerns should not be read as intending harm or preventing necessary medications from being delivered to Utahns who receive them under the grant. The earliest the grant will be considered is at the committee's next scheduled meeting in May. State Department of Health administrators did their best to answer the questions, noting that they had received no prior notice that lawmakers would be asking questions about that grant or any others on the list. The inaction puts the health department, already pinched by two years of budget cutbacks, in the position of finding the $420,000 from other areas in agency programs to cover the cost of providing the services through April.

Last month, the largely Republican Utah legislature resolved to put roadblocks into any implementation of the health care reform bill. By coincidence, today is the 20th anniversary of the death of Ryan White.