I have lived in Utah for more than half of my life. I moved here when I was a young mother with a young family. I’ve raised my children here. I chose Utah, in part, because of the down to earth qualities, the family oriented atmosphere and the wide open spaces. If you’d told me twenty years ago that I would be driving hundreds of miles to attend a press conference on human rights, specifically human rights for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered people, I would have said you were crazy.
Utah would never host a press conference like “that”.
Fast-forward twenty years and I am finally able to say that Utah would most certainly host a press conference like “that”, and we did so today. The Human Rights Campaign – the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization-kicked off, “On the Road to Equality,” today in Salt Lake City, of all places.
Of all the places in the nation they could have chosen, they chose little ol’ us.
Why did the HRC choose Utah?
They could have kicked off in California, home of the Prop 8 debate and the only state in the United States where voters have chosen to remove civil rights from a segment of the population. Of course, the money that fed the Prop 8 machine before the 2008 elections came from Utah; the money came from organizations that included (by a vast majority) Mormons under direct orders from their leadership to give all the money they could (and more) to defeat marriage equality in California. Utah is home to the Mormon Church and the Utah Pride Center is literally in the backyard of the church’s SLC headquarters. It was more than appropriate for the HRC to begin their nationwide awareness tour here.
The HRC’s bus, a bright yellow and blue rolling sign of the times, sat in the blazing heat of the Utah Pride Center parking lot when Joe Solmonese, HRC President, approached the mic. I’ve been reading Mr. Solmonese’s words for quite some time and he has a powerful message. I was a bit surprised when the man who introduced the bus tour wasn’t wearing a bright red cape. He wasn’t nine feet tall and he didn’t wear a mask.
Aren’t all superheroes supposed to wear a mask? Don’t they all have a cape?
“Across the country,” began Mr. Solmonese, “hearts and minds are changing in favor of LGBT equality and the fair-minded people of Utah are no different. I can’t think of a better place to kick off our national bus tour than Salt Lake City.”
Really?
Yes, really.
According to Bruce Bastian (now that’s a great name for a superhero, right?), “HRC understands that Utah is critical in the national movement.”
You bet we are. Utah is home to 5000 same sex couples according to the latest census. One in every 150 homes in Utah has a member of the LGBT community as the head of household. Is that a lot? I don’t know, honestly. But it’s enough that we don’t want to live in the shadows, and we don’t want to be second class citizens. We want to get married. We deserve equality. We need to fight and continue to demand equality with every breath, every election and every issue –
And that’s when I realized that neither Joe Solmonese nor Bruce Bastian is a superhero. Or maybe they are, but so am I. We all are. HRC released polls today, in conjunction with the inaugural stop of the multi-city tour, that contained some surprising information about Utah in particular, and our capacity to be superheroes.
The polls, released today, found that a majority of Utahans, some 66%, believe that members of the LGBT community deserve to have the same partnership rights as any other married couple. An overwhelming majority of people, 74%, have stated that discrimination against gays and lesbians in Utah is a problem. Clearly there is still work to be done, but clearly people are beginning to see this issue as the problem it truly is. More and more people are beginning to understand that anytime a human being is treated as less than another human being — they are treated as less than human.
Every person in Utah has the power to be a superhero. Every one of us, like the courageous members of the HRC, have the ability to step up to a mic (even if that microphone happens to be the fork you’re holding on Thanksgiving) and say, in one voice, “This is not fair. This is not right. Change this.” It is going to all of us – gay, lesbian, straight ally, bi-sexual, transgendered, queer – to change the hearts and minds of our families so they can see that everyone, no matter what, deserves to be treated as human.
Bruce Bastian, a Utah philanthropist and HRC board member, is taking that stand. In reference to the popular, “It Gets Better” anti-bullying campaign, Mr. Bastian declared, “It’s [already] getting better.”
According to Joe Solmonese, “This inaugural stop promises to be enriching and informative and will leave LGBT Utahans with a sense of pride and empowerment.”
I am empowered. I want to see these changes. I want to marry and I want my children and step-children to see that my partner and I have made the same commitment that other parents take for granted every day.
Is it already getting better? Yeah, I think it is.
Sources
Human Rights Campaign, Press Conference, Utah Pride Center, Salt Lake City
More from this contributor:
The Slippery Slope of Marriage Equality
Why You Can’t Vote on Whom I Choose to Marry
When Your Son Becomes Your Daughter