I oppose ALL anti-discrimination laws because I favor absolute freedom of association.

I’ll buy that argument on the day in which those who say “no” to gay anti-discrimination laws introduce legislation to do away with religion based anti-discrimination laws. Oddly enough, that never seems to happen.

And in the case of Utah… it actually is true that the state Legislature has unquestionably given permission – if not downright encouragement – for blatant anti-gay discrimination.

We have an advocate in the White House now – let’s focus our efforts on supporting him on a broader scale with initiatives like overturning the Federal DOMA and force the states to comply with Federal regulations.

I am seriously wondering if a better tactic in Utah would be for advocates to stop legislating for LGBT protections and start petitioning to remove religious protections. Maybe then people would begin to better understand the irrationality of their “choice” argument.

The adoption bill that failed is a bit more complicated. Just as archaic, it failed not only because of anti-gay sentiments, but the self-righteous attitude toward unmarried heterosexuals stemming back to the prejudicial days of “bastard children”.

I agree, Utah is a scary place. So is Tennessee. Both states I have gone out of my way to avoid when travelling.

At the same time, with regard to anti-discrimination measures for employment and housing, I can’t say Ohio has been much better (excepting city-level protections). But I’m still holding out hope for EHEA this year and hate-crime changes.

In Utah, I don’t expect the final bill to be passed either for hospital visitation, medical decisions or inheritance rights to pass either.

I think it’s been more than clear that (a) the Mormon church and other religious folk will see any recognition of gay couples as being against heterosexual marriage, and (b) in the same vein, any rights at all would require them to back off their self-righteous and self-serving religious arguments and admit how they’ve conflated church and state issues.