From time to time, well-meaning friends who have escaped the protective dome that seals off my home state from the rest of our sinful planet ask me why I stay in Utah. Their implied suggestion is that I, with my unorthodox (for Utah) interests and attitudes (not to mention my somewhat scruffy looks), might be happier if I lived in some place a bit more… cosmopolitan. I don’t deny that they could be right. After all, I am an unmarried, childless, socially liberal, anti-authoritarian agnostic who enjoys the occasional distilled beverage and generally doesn’t care what people do (or don’t do) with their genitalia. My out-of-state friends are not misguided to wonder what could possibly keep me living in a place that is notoriously conservative, religious, provincial, family-oriented, and hostile to dissenters — in short, about as opposite from everything that defines my life as you can get. Nevertheless, my response to their concern is usually just a shrug and the somewhat lame proclamation that, “this is home.”
Utah is home for me, and even with the cultural incompatibilities that I frequently encounter here, I like this place. I like the climate, the landscape, and, yes, I even like much about the local culture, too. I like that I can trace my family history back to the original Mormon migration into this area, and I like that I’ve lived and breathed the local history that is fast fading from memory. Utah is my home, and I doubt I’ll ever live anywhere else.
Still, that doesn’t mean that I don’t get twitchy when I see poll data indicating that Utah is the most pro-life — i.e., that most anti-choice — state in the union. (That one wouldn’t bother me if the state wasn’t also so dead-set opposed to teaching kids about contraception, but that’s a rant for another day.) It also baffles me to read that Utah continues to give President Bush ridiculously high approval ratings despite his administration’s increasingly obvious shortcomings, merely because he belongs to the “right” party. But what really makes me hang my head in shame for living in Utah is when I read things like the Rosa Parks anecdote that appeared earlier this week in Paul Rolly’s Salt Lake Tribune column:
In 1992, Parks accepted an invitation to speak to the Salt Lake City Chapter of the NAACP.
Then-State Rep. Joanne Milner, D-Salt Lake, remembers that she asked House Speaker Craig Moody, R-Sandy, if Parks could address the House for five minutes. Moody declined, telling Milner the Legislature was too busy.
The House, of course, did have time to recognize a high school cheerleading group, a county dairy queen, cherry queen and turkey queen, as well as a champion cowboy.
Too busy. Uh-huh. Now, granted, Utah historically had little to do with the civil rights movement, owing to the fact that up until fairly recently the African-American population of the state numbered somewhere around a few dozen, but still… the least our elected officials could do is offer a little respect to a person who changed the frickin’ country!
What a disgrace.
