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Loading ...Utah’s gay community honors Gov. Jon Huntsman
06.04.2009 3:39pm EDT
(Salt Lake City) The state’s gay community is honoring Gov. Jon Huntsman with the Utah Pride Center’s 2009 Pete Suazo Political Action Award.
Huntsman this year said he supports civil unions and came out in favor of a package of legislation called the Common Ground Initiative that would have extended some benefits to same-sex and other nontraditional couples.
Valerie Larabee, the Pride Center’s executive director, says Huntsman has been fair-minded on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues over the years.
The Utah Pride festival is this weekend, but Huntsman’s spokeswoman says a scheduling conflict will keep him from attending.
The award was established in 2002 and honors late state Sen. Pete Suazo for his work on hate crimes legislation.
This seems absurd. Huntsman did nothing to further the Common Ground initiative. Gay groups in Utah must be desperate.
Common Ground Initiative is so fake and stupid. Just call it Domestic Partnership instead.
I love this! Gov. Huntsman was a calming and moderate voice on this topic. Even more shocking is that Gov. Huntsman had NOTHING to gain by coming out in favor of all of this. His party base was furious, but he stood up for it because it was right.
Maybe Governor Huntsman did not do all we want from our political leaders, but he deserves credit for doing much more than we could believe possible in a very conservative state and for standing up to a very intolerant religious community. Let there be credit where credit is due– but let’s also keep up the fight for full equality and liberation, our ultimate goal.
Utah homos are a*s kissing hetero apologists! seems only fitting I guess being born and raised in such a backwater hick state like Utah.
There was greater power to Huntsman’s supportive words than many realize. He pierced a stony silence from the larger cultural establishment on the issue, by virtue of being himself an insider in such a sheerly influential place. It provoked reactions and debate like Utah hasn’t seen in years, and exposed both the great hateful depravity as well as the great loving affinity of many people, both expected and unexpected.
Rather than do nothing to help gay rights, Huntsman’s words were like a tornado ripping through an entire establishment of taboos and dogmas. And he highlighted something very real – people 40 or younger in Utah tend to support at least fundamental gay rights that the Common Ground Initiative sought. That it was defeated was no surprise whatsoever, as most legislators were the conservative in what were already hyperconservative elections, and even the relative moderates of their constituents went ideologically unrepresented. The effect (or “damage”) had already been done – it was now starkly evident that Utah’s population was no longer a solid bloc on this issue, with a gradient that changed with the age of voters. LGBT rights in Utah has a good future, but it might take some decades for the famously long-living older generation to be unable to vote.
365gay was really annoying last year with their “California gays should learn from Utah gays” yet here we are, nothing has been done. They give speeches and give awards but the fact that “he supports”, doesn’t mean “it’s done”. And knowing the Mormon church they will never let that happen on their own turf.
There wasn’t much he could do, Jay. None of the bills in the Initiative even came out of committee.
I understand that it was brave of him to come out in support of this, but at the same time he’s still advocating 2nd class status for gays.
I could understand horing him if he had come out in support of gay marriage, but that’s not the case. He supports civil unions that don’t even provide all the benefits of marriage.
Our community needs to stop praising people who advocate “seperate but equal.” Especially when the people don’t even advocate full equality.
GNN, you’re missing the enormity of what happened. In a place where LGBT people don’t even have the right not to be fired and the right not to be evicted all just for being gay, Huntsman broke enormous taboos to say what he did. Maybe it’s easy for someone to think in California and New England terms where we demand full equality to build on top of the hard-fought rights we already have. But in Utah, the fight is still hard, and some of the most basic rights still not yet won. Have a little empathy for the relative scale, because it’s going to take decades for Utah to be on par. So every positive step is a good thing.
Utah gays are choking on fumes, STANDING, not even sitting, at the back of the bus.
there is a gay run organization
that is not honoring the boycott
the group is called the imperial court
they went to Utah over the Memorial
day weekend let them know thet they need to honor the boycotts if they want our
money this group is in most states