Gov. Gary Herbert, elected patriarch of sovereignty, has made his position quite clear. He praised Sotomayor’s decision, claiming this to be a “state-rights issue.” In my understanding, human rights should never be subject to the debate found on the legislative floor. A state’s sovereignty does not trump the intrinsic powers found in all human beings. One cannot, by power of pen, limit two consenting adults from loving each other, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Yet this state, and its elected head, would seek to legally invalidate and demean an entire community. If all people are created equal, as is the founding principle of this country, then the logical conclusion must be that to any individual to whom fewer rights are afforded must therefore be less of a person.
This state is obsessed with the idea of a “divinely sanctioned” heteronormativity. No clearer was this made then at a collusion of bigots held in Highland. The standing-room-only meeting’s speaker, former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, spouted his spiteful rhetoric to an affirming crowd: “We have a right to raise our kids without homosexuals being part of the Boy Scouts, the schools and teachers and doing everything,.”
Where is my right to raise my children in a world without petty, prejudicial, poisonous proclamations to society? I seem to have overlooked the First Amendment that would prevent both Mack and myself from achieving our goals.
These dogmatic, deleterious dissidents are not unique. They are the latest inheritors of an intellectual tradition of hatred and animosity. It is their same attitude that can be found reflected in the words spoken against African-Americans by the likes of Brigham Young, according to his Journal of Discourses. This state, this country, is no stranger to ignorance. These enemies of reason, like a cornered animal, are gnashing their teeth most violently when their fate is most obvious.
Cowards are only brave when there is security in numbers. Two-thirds of this state’s population subscribes to an ideological system that views homosexuality as sinful. Therefore, the government is appealing to “being able to define marriage through ordinary democratic channels,” feeling their bigotry is securely supported by mob rule. This, however, is a false idea of the overarching moral authority of democracy. Morality is not decided by a majority but by the wisdom of people whose interest extend beyond the common man.
These regressives are spouting the tired, haggard and doomed arguments that have been tried at every step society takes forward. They, like their arguments, will be found wanting in the eyes of future historians and will be relegated to irrelevance. Until then, I and people like me will continue to crusade against the vermin who would inflict their odious opinions on the world. They will rear their heads, bolstered by false courage, using ignorance as their shield, only to be crushed by the ever-forward onslaught of progress.