From: "Shelly Roberts" Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 13:20:07 +0000 Subject: ROBERTS' RULES: Utah ROBERTS' RULES by Shelly Roberts STATE OF MASS HYSTERIA You gotta love Utah. Several years ago, Salt Lake City banned ALL non-curricular student clubs, because some students wanted to form ONE gay-straight alliance support group. Obviously better to have all the kids sitting at home quilting, which, as we know, is THE most likely activity for non-otherwise-occupied adolescents, than to entertain the barest possibility that teens might be a few light years ahead of their elders in entertaining the barest glimmer that an alliance between "gay" and "straight" might be of some benefit to both. Add to that a recently reported incident where a 13-year-old at a school gathering in Provo, Utah called for "all gays to be hung and all lesbians burned at the stake." (Hmmmm. I wonder where an idea like that might have been birthed? Can we say "At home!", Boys and Girls? Can we say "Mormon Church" Class? Can we say "Eagle Forum" or "Promise Keepers" or "Fercrysake, at least join the Twentieth Century if not the Twenty-first!" Students?) Utah. This is a State of Anachrony. It would still prefer, I think, that a man be legally able to own more than one wife. Laws are professed openly to be "divinely inspired" (like Utah had a particular corner on this market). And there is probably an undercurrent initiative toiling and troubling somewhere in a back county to bring back good old fashioned stoning. Yee ha! And now there's Wendy Weaver. For those of you who haven't been paying much attention, which lately I think includes most of us, browsing for horoscopes, affinity roommates, and to find out if, when, and where there's going to be a dance, here's the back story: Wendy Weaver is a pretty good high school psychology and gym teacher. (GYM teacher. Is the picture getting any clearer?) She's been doing it for nearly a couple of decades. Her teams win metal. And she was even selected as Teacher of the Year once. But, as the story goes, all too often, Wendy left Ol' Whatsisname, her husband, and took up with another (gasp) woman. It's a story we've mostly all heard a billion or two times in the last decade. Except. Wendy lives and tries to work in Sorry State of Utah. Mormon fundamentalist heaven. So, as you would expect, Wendy got sanctioned. And fired from her coaching job in spite of four state titles. Not only the usual drivel about "role modeling of negative conduct for children," and "immoral, illegal and unhealthy sexual activities outside of marriage" (as though immoral, illegal and unhealthy sexual activities INSIDE of marriage would be ok.), but a gag order. Ms. Weaver was enjoined from talking about her affinity inside and outside the classroom. The district told Weaver "not to make comments, announcements or statements regarding your homosexual orientation or lifestyle," threatening that if she did, it "may jeopardize her job and be cause for termination." Naturally, she is suing. Some tiny little civil rights thing about free speech. All of which is to be duly adjudicated and none of it unexpected. But now we get to the point that has me totally tickled, but not ticking off Utah on my triptic of immediate relocation destinations. Taking a chapter from the "If the gays want in, let's close everybody down!" book of high school demeaner, (sic) one moral-minded citizen (sick) is proposing legislation to rescind compulsory education throughout the state. That's right. If you don't like school,you don't have to go! That way NO ONE has to go to school with those queers. Or anyone else!! That'll show her, all right. If you don't want your kid to be in a school where there might be homosexuality mentioned, discussed, or, heaven forefend, present, why, you should just, by gumption, have the right to not have your kid go to any school at all. Apparently that makes perfect sense. In Utah logic. Although_ hmmm. Maybe there actually is a good thought in there somewhere. What if we all decided to just quit teaching. We know that if the gay teachers, and the allies of gay teachers just upped and outted the system one day, there'd be practically nobody left to consume the tomato-beef-corn casserole in the cafeteria. And they'd be hard pressed to find enough replacements willing to put life and limb at risk for the paltry pittances it pays. We could just stop teaching their kids. Maybe set up separate-but-superior schools for ourselves and just start concentrating on our own children. You'll have to excuse me, I have to go phone my travel agent and make sure that she never schedules a flight of mine through Utah airspace. They might try to shoot down the plane with bows and arrows. Or, more likely, blunderbusses. What do they call Bubba's in Utah? "Morons" would be my best guess. - - - - - - - - - - (C) 1999. Shelly Roberts. All rights reserved. A one-time simultaneous print right is hereby granted to subscribing newspapers; all other rights, including electronic or digital reproduction are reserved. Must be reprinted only in its entirety. Shelly Roberts is an internationally syndicated columnist, journalist and author of the 1999 Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Living Daily Calendar. (Spinsters Ink.)