To be more like Utah
For decades Utah has provided the gold standard in American political, cultural and religious conservatism. There is the dominance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There is the nearly allwhite population. There is the rugged cowboy independence.
Put it all together and you produce a state in which Barack Obama got but 24 percent in the last presidential election.
Obama got 37 percent in Arkansas. Thus Utah, for presidential voting purposes, is Arkansas without Pulaski County, Jefferson County or a half-dozen Delta counties, where Obama got most of his Arkansas votes.
Actually, there are a couple of other differences between Utah and Arkansas. One is that Utah has an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent, compared to ours of 5.7 percent. Another is that Utah has an emerging information-technology sector, called “Silicon Slope,” that includes Adobe and other high-tech innovators. And there is one other difference. Last week the Republican Utah Legislature passed and the Republican governor signed a bill protecting gays, lesbians and transgender persons from discrimination in jobs and housing. In Arkansas the Legislature has passed a state law saying no local city or town may dare pass an ordinance providing those protections.
So I’ll offer this observation: Utah’s progressivism on this matter is driven by the new attitudes and youthful invasion fueled by a growing modern economy, which Arkansas lacks.
And I’ll make this prediction: Utah’s progressivism in this regard, as contrasted with Arkansas’ hateful law, will cause Utah to surge further ahead and Arkansas to lag further behind, economically speaking.
New jobs bring new thinking. New thinking draws more new jobs. That’s a death spiral for places of old thinking.
So how can it be that a conservative religious republic like Mormon-ized Utah could tolerate the supposed sin of different sexual orientation more than our conservative religious republic of the Rapert-ized variety could tolerate it?
It’s a simple matter of practical thinking and human tolerance of difference.
Sen. Jason Rapert, Jesus’ self-appointed personal legislator for Arkansas, told me in a television interview last week that there is no conflict between conservative religion and gay rights. He said the majority’s view of morality, not religion, must prevail in public policy, period. He said this business of rights for gays is a trumped-up liberal concoction for an unneeded new “protected class.”
On the other hand, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints had this statement to offer about the new law banning discrimination against gays in Utah: “The principle that we have urged legislators to address is that of fairness for everyone. In a society which has starkly diverse views on what rights should be protected, the most sensible way to move forward is for all parties to recognize the legitimate concerns of others. After a considerable amount of hard work, we believe that the Utah Legislature has wisely struck that balance. LGBT people cannot be fired or denied housing just for being gay. At the same time, religious conscience and the right to protect deeply held religious beliefs is protected by robust legislation. While none of the parties achieved all they wanted, we do at least now have an opportunity to lessen the divisiveness in our communities without compromising on key principles.”
The key phrase: “Recognize the legitimate concerns of others.”
Mormons and Utah have acknowledged the needed co-existence of religious rights and gay rights. To the contrary, Rapert-ists and Arkansas have declared that only prevailing religious-based views—and not gay rights—stand worthy of protection in public policy.
Be advised that Utah’s new law is the result of a six-year negotiated process toward what’s being called the “Utah Compromise,” one that, beyond giving gays these protections, exempts religious groups and religious-affiliated groups like hospitals from complying.
It further grants protections for noncompliance on the basis of religious beliefs, but only so long as the noncompliance does not violate the expressed protections of the law in jobs and housing and is otherwise “reasonable, non-disruptive and non-harassing.”
That means the famous example of the baker who doesn’t want to bake a cake for a gay wedding is left to the interpretation of the courts, which is where those kinds of questions inevitably end up anyway.
Because we in Arkansas fear that a baker might be made to sell a cake to people he thinks are sinners, and because we fear that a guy who says he’s a gal will go into the gals’ restroom— and because we are ruled by our fear rather than anything positive—we reserve the right of an employer to fire a gay person simply because he hates gay people.
In Utah, they’ll try to be less afraid and less hateful than that, and, in the process, fare better than us in the diversifying culture and modernizing economy.
Finally, a correction: Sunday’s column misquoted Sam Ledbetter, chairman of the state Education Board, as saying he wouldn’t have voted for state takeover of the Little Rock School District had he known or suspected that House Bill 1733, which would authorize privatization, might be part of the deal. He said only that his thought process would have been different. It was a consequential error because, on Monday, some Little Rock legislators were asking Ledbetter to call for a revote.