Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The terminally ridiculous Utah state Sen. Chris Buttars is back again and he's going to make sure that anything that even potentially helps any gay person is not going to be tolerated no matter how many non-gay families have to suffer for it. Salt Lake City has an ordinance that allows people to put another adult in their household, whether related or not, on their health insurance and Buttars is working hard to get rid of it.
He's doing this in the name of stopping anything that might help gays despite the fact that the vast majority of people who take advantage of this program are not gay. The Salt Lake Tribune tells the story:
Melanie Schertz's father died two years ago on Friday the 13th - under a full moon.The death left her mother, who suffers from Parkinson's and fibromyalgia, with no insurance and a monthly medicine tab of $400.
Fortunately, Salt Lake City's adult-designee ordinance allowed Schertz - a single mom who works as a capital crime-lab tech - to insure her 65-year-old mother and housemate.
"If that's gone, we're going to lose everything," Schertz says. "We would end up losing our home."
Now, like the bad omen that befell her father, a bill in the Legislature looms over her family's financial security. Designed to eradicate Mayor Ralph Becker's newly adopted domestic-partnership registry, SB267 also would kill the city's adult-designee provision.
Drafted by West Jordan's conservative Sen. Chris Buttars, the bill is intended to block benefits for same-sex couples. But, according to the city, 78 percent of city employees who use the adult-designee program are not gay. What's more, 10 percent use the provision for their mothers.
"It's not just a gay thing," Schertz says. "It's helping people who are financially dependent on each other to be able to survive. We're not destroying the morality of the world."
And once again it becomes clear that "family values" is nothing more than a catchphrase that means "get the fags."
Comments
Ridiculous, yes. But also powerful here in the reddest of the Red States. The vote in the House committee that passed the bill out and sent it to the floor was 4-0 in favor. [There are four Republicans on the committee and one Democrat, which is about the proportion of Republicans/Democrats in both houses here.] The four "yea" votes were from every Republican on the committee. [The sole Dem. was in another committee meeting at the time and did not vote.]
However ridiculous the bill is, and however many non-gay elderly people for example lose health care coverage on their children's policies as a result, the bill stands a very good chance of passing both houses here.
The sad thing is the the Hon. [?] Sen. Buttars is not considered a comic buffoon by his fellow Republican legislators who control by margins of 4-1 both houses of the Utah legislature. They consider him, many of them, to be doing God's work. His bills pass, with the result at times that the taxpayers of Zion end up shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars defending in court [unsuccessfully] the constitutionality of patently unconstitutional bills.
And the beat goes on....
Posted by: flatlander100 | February 12, 2008 10:15 AM
Ed wrote:
Well, you know Ed, if you have to destroy a few families to not save any families, its like the old saying: sometimes you have to break a few eggs to not make an omelette.
Wait...something about that doesn't seem right...
Posted by: Dan | February 12, 2008 12:05 PM
Bah! Unbelievably frustrating. How many more sins must be baptized in the name of "stopping the gays?"
Posted by: Joe | February 12, 2008 2:46 PM
Dan,
I can see the reason for your confusion. The saying is actually "Sometimes, to convince people you're making an omelet, you have to break a few eggs."
Posted by: MyPetSlug | February 12, 2008 5:39 PM
This seems like a never ending waste of taxpayer money where does it end....add your mother, father, grandparents, cousins, friends...and the taxpayers of the city, county, state etc foot the bill...time to say no just because you have a job with benefits does not entitle you to insure everyone under the sun...
Ed being a libertarian I would think your desire for smaller govt and less taxpayer burden would bring you to say no to this !!
Posted by: AFSGTSAM | February 12, 2008 6:31 PM
You wrote: where does it end....add your mother, father, grandparents, cousins, friends...and the taxpayers of the city, county, state etc foot the bill...time to say no just because you have a job with benefits does not entitle you to insure everyone under the sun...
Well, AFSGT, that's not what the SLC registry does. You can't add anyone you please, even relatives, except under very limited circumstances. You must satisfy the city that you both live together [note: that does not mean sleep together], you both contribute to the upkeep/maintenance of the abode, that the two of you form a functioning couple, a "family" so defined, etc. It doesn't simply permit someone in SLC to add, willy-nilly, any resident of the abode, or any family member as an insured family member. It's more restrictive than that.
Worth pointing out, I think, that the creation of the registry passed the SL Council unanimously, and it has drawn majority public support in the city when the issue is polled. Which raises this question, I think: If the city's residents and elected officials are very strongly in favor of the plan, and if the city's residents are carrying the freight for it via the city budget [paid by city taxes], what business is it of the legislature to tell the city it can't? Particularly since Buttars & Co. deliver homilies to "local control" and "keeping the state government out of local community affairs" on the floor of the Senate with annoying regularity.
Posted by: flatlander100 | February 12, 2008 7:54 PM
Gays are the new "Nigras" to the Republican Party. The party made huge gains after LBJ had the audacity to sign off on the Civil Rights Act. And now, since "nigras" are hopelessly equalized and integrated, they won't make good whipping boys (no pun intended). But there is lots to be gained by picking on the new "nigras". What's pathetic, is that these right wingers have so much power now that liberals have to invoke local control or states rights in order to fend off assaults originating at the national level.
Posted by: soboco | February 12, 2008 8:13 PM
We have far too many states in the U.S. who didn't really want to be a part of it anyway. Texas (home of W), Florida (home of so many current school boards trying to push creationism in schools), Alabama (home of Auburn--personal peeve), and, of course, Utah.
Why don't we just tell the southern states Lincoln was wrong, and they're free to go now, and tell Utahans they can go ahead and set up their kingdom of Deseret.
Really, would the rest of us actually suffer any loss? I'm sure I could still get a passport on the rare occasions I go to those cultural hellholes.
Posted by: James Hanley | February 12, 2008 9:57 PM
On the money, Mr. Hanley. Since the tax base is predominately Northern large cities, the infrastructure repairs will commence in short order.
Posted by: trog69 | February 13, 2008 2:21 AM
James,
You'd need to do what the turks and Greeks did after World War I - finance the decent sane people of the red states to move to the blue states while the blue state's were purged of their detritus by emigration to Jesusland.
Of course, once the redstaetrs realise that the blue states have been subsidising them for decades, you might be overrun by the indigent hordes.
Posted by: Ian Gould | February 13, 2008 3:59 AM
Good idea James, but most of the blue states are colder than a witch's tit.
Posted by: John | February 13, 2008 5:43 AM
Well,
I'm far from impartial on the topic. I've always kind of favored the idea espoused by James Hanley, but find myself in a southern state (Georgia). So, if this were to happen, I'd have to relocate; the crazy would really come out down here then (its only barely in check now). One problem with the plan is that the southern states would get a sizable chunk of a very efficient military and, having some very aggresive tendencies, might be tempted to use it when their economies started to have trouble.
Posted by: Scott Reese | February 13, 2008 9:37 AM
It's "the New National Nigras." See also Loving vs. VA, and the various "miscegenation" laws, and all the rest of it. Same rationales too.
Re. military: just repeal DADT and allow gay warriors to serve honestly, and re-open some bases up north, and we will not have to worry about that.
About Buttars: Psychologically this is really simple: Pleasure is bad. Pain is good. Therefore prevent people from having pleasure, and if doing so creates more pain, that's OK. If you look at what the puritans have been up to, you'll see how well it fits this pattern.
Meanwhile, we need to put it across to voters in Utah and elsewhere who are affected by this: "That's right, your family is going to take a hit when this bigoted nonsense goes through. Now choose: Adam and Steve get equal rights and Grandma gets her medicine, or Adam & Steve get sent packing but Grandma doesn't get her medicine. Like it or not, what's good for Adam & Steve, and Ethyl & Eve, is good for YOU too. Remember: Liberty and justice for ALL."
Posted by: g510 | February 14, 2008 12:46 AM