My Letter to the Trib

Editors,

I cannot pick up my copy of the Tribune on any morning and not read how our misguided legislature seeks to marginalize, minimalize, and add to the burdens of those who are different but live among us. They may not look exactly like me, though I like salsa better than ketchup and tortillas better than Wonder Bread. They may not share my gender orientation, but their agenda, if there is one, does not threaten my marriage, my family or my values. I am an old Mormon bishop and I cannot sit still any longer and listen to the garbage coming from the hill from our ethnically challenged and homophobic legislators. They are a threat to me and the tranquility of my life.

I ask these erstwhile champions, protectors of our freedom, our race, our morality, wouldn't the world be a better place if you just enjoyed your lobbyist paid for Jazz games and junkets to the Caribbean, and left the rest of us alone? In spite of these legislators of morality as people of Utah, who are kind, compassionate, and caring, can we not find and share the things we have in common, celebrate our differentness, enjoy that which is unique about us all as children of a loving Heavenly Father rather than marginalizing and criminalizing so many among us?

A letter to Rep. Barrus (R) Centerville

Dear Roger,

I am very disappointed to see your name among the "yeas" on HB 239 denying driving privilege cards to my friends. I hope you can look Paco and Lucy in the face and explain to them your rationale and how they and so many others, any of us for that matter, are benefited by your action in supporting this bigoted measure. The bill is punitive and is based on the politics of racial animosity and fear. I read the bill's sponsor, Rep Donnelson, is an active supporter of the Utah Minutemen Project.

What happened to Elder Ballard's advice to legislators to be compassionate in these matters?

In two years or less with the Democrats controlling the US House, Senate and with either HRC or Barack in the White House they will undo everything the small minds of your party in the Utah Legislature will have attempted here, should any of it actually pass the state senate. Even the likely R nominee, Senator McCain, will undo what you and others are trying to do here in Utah and Oklahoma.

I am very angry and it is difficult for me to not write hateful and mean spirited things. I find this absolutely repugnant and evil. Shame on you Roger and don't tell me again that if I knew all that you did I would have voted the same way.