(OKLAHOMA CITY) In this article from the Salt Lake City Tribune, we're told that support forLGBTs has "shot up" over the past year following passage of a bias ban approved by the Salt Lake City Council that includes sexual orientation/gender identity in housing and employment.
How many times have I heard that legislatures and courts must not get too far ahead of the "will of the people" or there will be some ill-described chicken-little type of reaction among the voters: respect for the law and mom and apple pie will diminish and Gee-sus himself will come to earth and....well, you get the drift.
After reading the article I'm again reminded that so many people, such as toe-the-line Mormons, can change their opinions merely because their leaders, in effect, tell them to, either directly through the legislative processor by leading with their own behavioral change.
If this SLC Tribune poll is close to accurate in its description, just how accurate is the dreadful prediction that should the United States Supreme Court rule in our same-gender marriage favor on appeal of the currently litigated California Prop 8 trial, America will fall into total oblivion with Joe Six-Pack hubbies divorcing their long suffering wives to run off for a gay fling with Ted Haggard, and Sally Soccer moms running off to pal around with Ellen Degeneres for free samples of Cover Girl make-up? Just how far in front of public opinion does the Supreme Court need to be if a majority of Mormons in Utah, which led the fight with Roman Catholics against Prop 8 in California in 2008, can increase by a range of 10% to 45% their approval and acceptance of gay/lesbian civil rights in their own state.
By the way, the recognition of my civil rights is inherent with my birth as an American citizen and in no way needs approval from anyone, let alone those who believe in golden tablets from the sky, magic underwear, and ancestral baptism. The denial of my civil rights because I'm gay is what's illegal, not my desire to have the same social, financial, and legal benefits which I'm paying for with my taxes.
No one's Constitutional civil rights should be held up asthe prizefora raffle ticket in the lottery of public opinion.
What I'm coming around to is this: If America had a national spokesperson who led using the force of law as well as his own example and not just by mere words of fierce advocacy, and who had led by his presence in Maine in its recent vote on same-gender marriage, or even farther back, to the California vote in November 2009 on Prop 8--both votes having a devastating set back on civil rights for gay/lesbian taxpayers--can't you imagine that successful votes would have reinforced the legislative and judicial decisions that were already in place at the time, decisions that fully recognized our rights of citizenship?
What if that person was the president of the United States, one who prides himself on his commitment to changing the tone of government in Washington?
I know what change-I-can-believe-in looks like, but all I can see are two faces.
'Dramatic jump' with Utahns for gay rights Salt Lake City Tribune
snip--Poll shows big increase in support for LGBT rights in Utah:
Some two in three Utah residents back workplace protections for LGBT workers and hospital visitation and inheritance rights for gay and lesbian couples, compared with 56% in January of last year, a Salt Lake Tribune poll has found. The shift in support for LGBT rights follows the November approval by the Salt Lake City Council of measures to ban bias based on sexual orientation or gender identity in housing and the workplace.
Some two in three Utah residents back workplace protections for LGBT workers and hospital visitation and inheritance rights for gay and lesbian couples, compared with 56% in January of last year, a Salt Lake Tribune poll has found. The shift in support for LGBT rights follows the November approval by the Salt Lake City Council of measures to ban bias based on sexual orientation or gender identity in housing and the workplace.
snip--
Opposition dropped, overall, from 40 percent to 23 percent. Among LDS respondents, it plummeted from 48 percent to 28 percent.
"This isn't a gradual change of attitudes. This is a fairly dramatic jump," says Matthew Burbank, chairman of the University of Utah's political science department. "Clearly, the fact that the LDS Church was officially endorsing this position had an impact on people."
