Snaps & Slaps
SNAP: LDS Church
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints president Thomas Monson gets a snap for agreeing to meet with representatives of gay LDS group Affirmation to discuss the church’s abuses of gay and transgender people, including the church’s past promotion of electroshock therapy. The LDS Church has to own up to a lot of evil when it comes to their treatment of gays – heartbreak, guilt, broken families, suicides. And ignoring Affirmation’s attempts to talk for three decades doesn’t make them good guys, here (you don’t get a cookie for acknowledging people you’ve hurt). But dialogues have to start somewhere, and maybe this meeting is an inch in the right direction. Don’t make us have to slap you later, LDS church.
SLAP: Utah Libertarians
Really, you guys? Former Totally Awesome Computers owner “Superdell” Dell Schanze is your candidate for governor? The same guy who illegally buzzes highways and boats with his paraglider. The same guy who recklessly speed through a neighborhood with his little girl in the car. The same guy who says Utah journalists are on the Devil’s payroll. Oh, and let’s not forget the same guy who supposedly went on a two minute anti-gay rant in a recording studio back in 2005 (Superdell denies it, but we don’t buy his story that it’s a talented impersonator). Former Big Water mayor Willy Star Marshall said it best here: “You have a constitutional right to be a jerk but that doesn’t mean you can be a jerk and run for office.” Next time, just vote for nobody, ok?
SNAP: Utah Pride Center
You may remember Standard of Liberty and Citizens for Families’ little meeting on March 31 where they compared gays to pedophiles and homosexuality to drug use? Well, the staff of the Utah Pride Center countered with their own meeting on April 9. Here they educated people about what it really means to be gay (hint: not mentally ill or a pedophile) and how to lower the rates of queer youth suicide and drug use (hint: pretty much ignore everything the Standard of Liberty and Citizens for Families says, ever).
The kicker? They also held it in the same building: the American Fork Public Library.
Ohhh, snap!