This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Maybe I'm just a stickler for truth in advertising, but when a group calling itself Yes! For Marriage promises a rally to prove how the masses in Utah support a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, I expect a real show.
I mean, the group's very name has an exclamation point. Doesn't that symbolize its energy? Yes! Doesn't that mean the folks involved are all whipped up and ready to flood the rest of us with a display of enthusiasm? Yes!
Organizers pitched the event last week as a rally. But it was packed with legislators and right-wing lobbyists who make a living minding other people's business. Average, workaday Joes who might be losing sleep over the prospect of gay marriage were hard to come by.
Where were the bullhorns? The impassioned speeches by blissfully married couples, telling how, exactly, same-sex unions would destroy what they have?
Standing in the lobby of a state Capitol annex were a couple of dozen people holding signs urging "defense of marriage." Two of them told me they were regular guys, and came in support of Amendment 3. But most were reporters, lobbyists for the Utah Eagle Forum, some frenzied constitutionalists and about 90 percent of the GOP legislative caucus.
State Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, and Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, led the charge. They sponsored Amendment 3, which defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. Its second clause, which prohibits legal recognition of common-law marriage or civil unions, has led state Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a Republican, to urge the measure's rejection.
Too broad and overreaching, Shurtleff has said. If passed, the amendment could strip common-law couples of health insurance benefits, inheritance rights, wills, property arrangements and other fundamental rights.
The AG worries that protective orders against abusive partners could be at risk. Hardly what this state needs right now, in the midst of record numbers of domestic violence cases - a softening of protections for victims.
Shurtleff is joined in his opposition to the amendment by Greg Skordas, his Democratic challenger, and Libertarian candidate Andrew McCullough.
It can't be good when a fellow Republican - a guy whose job it is to know Utah law and to interpret statute - raises serious objections to legislation. People may be starting to realize how soupy and poorly written this proposal really is. If the anti-gay marriage forces in Utah are so solid, so unified in righteousness, they might have drafted a more carefully worded document.
When the state's top lawyer, a man as firmly religious as any legislator and who also opposes same-sex marriage, finds gaping holes in something this big, you start wondering. What kind of good legal business is this? Voters might be wondering, too.
And so there was a rally. Er, uh, a public statement. Or whatever the heck it was. It struck me as such a tepid event I could not resist asking Buttars and Christensen why it was pegged as a "rally." Which is when Utah Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka hustled over to the microphone.
It was never meant to be a rally, she said. The media got it wrong. It was a press conference, she said, and those who thought otherwise were misinformed.
"We are just getting organized," Ruzicka said. "We will be having a rally, and when we do it will be a big one."
All right then. To poach a popular phrase, bring it on.