This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
I wrote Monday about how the Utah Legislature will have to sift through state code to ensure that all sections comply with now-legal same-sex marriage.
I pointed out that changing the Utah Constitution's Amendment 3, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, will take more than legislative action. Two-thirds of the lawmakers will have to put the repeal measure on the ballot for voters then to approve.
I also noted the actions of the late constitutional attorney Brian Barnard, who would scrutinize the state code for outdated laws then sue over their constitutionality.
One notable unconstitutional section still on Utah's books: anti-sodomy laws, which make it illegal to perform certain sexual acts, including those between same-sex couples.
Former state Rep. David Ure ran a bill in the mid-1990s to repeal the sodomy laws after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed such statutes unconstitutional, based on Texas case.
Ure reminds me that his bill didn't even get a sniff in the House committee because the morality police from the Utah Eagle Forum and other right-wing groups went apoplectic over the idea of making sodomy legal in Utah.
"My bill went nowhere," Ure said, "because of the bombshells coming down on me over that."
So the unconstitutional — though unenforced — measures remain on Utah's books.
—
Humans vs. beasts • While Utah still has anti-sodomy laws for humans, lawmakers were reluctant to pass a law forbidding sex with animals.
In the 1990s, when then-Rep. Frank Pignanelli introduced a "bestiality" bill making such activity a misdemeanor, it was defeated in the House.
At the time, one House member said Pignanelli "just doesn't understand the pressures we face on the farm in rural Utah."
It was the same year the Legislature refused efforts to legalize limited gambling.
Pignanelli quipped: "In Utah, you can have sex with horses, you just can't bet on them."
Rural representatives feared the bestiality bill would affect an artificial-insemination program farmers use to enhance their herds.
The bill passed the next year and now bestiality is a class B misdemeanor.
—
Bills of the future? • Utah legislators are still grappling with how to respond to the U.S. Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
There are proposals to pass some kind of religious-liberties law to protect the rights of faith-minded people to act in ways that follow their beliefs, including their view that homosexuality is a sin and that any accommodation they give to that lifestyle would be sinning.
The Legislature dealt with those concerns to a degree in 2015, but some lawmakers want to go further.
State Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, got a bill passed in the House that essentially would have placed religious liberties above all other rights and given people the right to discriminate if they did it to protect their faith freedoms.
That measure failed in the Senate, but some versions of it are sure to resurface in 2016.
I'm wondering: Based on the writings of Catholic scholars through the centuries, gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. So if Christensen's bill passes, can a practicing Catholic who owns a restaurant refuse service to an obese diner because serving that person would be aiding and abetting gluttony?