I received this in an email:

Utah State Senator Chris Buttars has gone on record for the following remarks:

Utah State Senator Chris Buttars recently called the LGBT community “probably the greatest threat to America…I know of.”

He went on to spew a series of vile insults including:

• Lesbian and gay relationships are “abominations.”
• LGBT people are moving America “toward a society that has no morals.”
• LGBT people will “destroy the foundation of American society.”

I looked up this ignorant old fuck, and well, the flurry of xenophobia is enough to make a person ill.

Buttars has sponsored legislation banning gay straight alliances in public schools, has introduced a resolution urging companies to have their employees say “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays” to customers, as well as an Intelligent Design Bill. Buttars has sponsored legislation to fund drug treatment programs, supports raising the minimum wage and assisting child crime victims.

During the 2006 General Session of the 56th Utah State Legislature Buttars sponsored S.B. 96, an Intelligent Design Bill. The bill would have forced instructors to teach students that evolution is a controversial theory and counter the theory with that of Creationists, using the term “Divine Design” . The New York Times called the bill “Anti-Darwin” and critics have pointed to Buttars’ words “Divine Design” as evidence for its religious undertow. The bill failed.

[snip]

During a debate of a school-funding bill on the floor of the State Senate in February 2008, the bill’s sponsor compared the bill to the baby involved in the Biblical story of King Solomon. Buttars responded saying, “This baby is black, I’ll tell you. This is a dark, ugly thing.” Buttars apologized for a remark on the State Senate floor,^[12] saying, “I got a little carried away, and I made a comment that I think a lot of people could take as racist. I certainly did not mean that in any way, but it was wrong and could easily be taken in just that way. I apologize to anyone who took offense.”^[13] In an interview, Buttars said, “We live in a very, very sensitive world. Although what I said had literally nothing in my mind to do with a human being at all — we were talking about an ugly bill — I made a statement that could be easily misinterpreted, and it was.”

Yeah, I don’t think so, Butterball.

Buttars has been outspoken on issues dealing with homosexuality, and co-sponsored Utah Constitutional Amendment 3 with Utah Boys Ranch colleague LaVar Christensen, which defined marriage in Utah as consisting “only of the legal union between a man and a woman.” Buttars criticized the domestic partnership executive order signed by Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. Buttars also introduced legislation that would ban gay clubs and gay-straight alliances in public schools. In 2008 Salt Lake City’s newly elected Mayor Ralph Becker introduced a domestic partnership registry that was unanimously approved by the City Council. On February 11, 2008 Buttars introduced a counter bill, SB0267, designed to prevent cities or counties from operating any kind of domestic partnership registry, alleging such registries would violate Utah Constitutional Amendment 3’s ban on same-sex marriage and domestic unions. Buttars became the subject of even more criticism on February 17, 2009, when in an interview with KTVX reporter Reed Cowan he compared homosexuals to radical Muslims and claimed that the gay rights movement is “the greatest threat to America”. Buttars might be headed for trouble after these last remarks with the Senate vowing to “deal with Buttars publicly” for his anti-gay statements. On February 20, 2009 he was removed as chairman and member from the Judicial Standing Committee due to these remarks.

Senator Butterball is emblematic of the old guard, the good old boys who require the status to remain perfectly quo. The ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ days are something they yearn to return, unaware that

1. The good old days weren’t always so good (as per Billy Joel), and
2. ‘Turning the clock back’ is a metaphor, not a literal event, and can only be done during Daylight Savings Time.

Butterball is considered something of a crazy lunatic by the Huffington Post, but in this regard, we have raging homophobes all over – from Rick Warren to the Reverend Don Wildmon of the execrable AFA, there’s a long standing tradition of homophobia from the elephant shitters on the right wing. (Let’s never mind that a large percentile of these ‘family values’ sycophants have electrified the headlines over the last decade with gay behavior).

This is (and has been for some time) a specific bugaboo of mine – because when you tell a specific group of people that they aren’t allowed specific rights that are accorded to everyone else…there’s a very specific word that defines that act:

DISCRIMINATION.

And while we’re all aware of the fundamental definition of the term civil rights, it bears repeating:

The rights belonging to an individual by virtue of citizenship, especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and by subsequent acts of Congress, including civil liberties, due process, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from discrimination.

Till the next post, then.