This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Gay-rights activist Eric Ethington met with a group of BYU students at the J. Reuben Clark Law School on the Provo campus Thursday night to discuss efforts to get nondiscrimination ordinances passed in Provo.

When he left the meeting to drive back to Salt Lake City, he discovered the tires on his car had been slashed.

Ethington said his car bore Equal Rights Campaign and Equality Utah bumper stickers, making it obvious he was a gay-rights supporter. Word of his meeting also could have gotten around campus, he said, because the meeting with about 30 students had been planned after they expressed interest in pursuing the ordinance changes.

When he got to his car, he noticed the right front tire was completely flat. He changed the tire with a spare, then drove away. By the time he got on Interstate 15, the left front tire had gone flat. Upon inspection, he noticed both tires had been slashed.

He was towed to a tire shop in Lehi and picked up his car on Friday.

He filed a complaint with the BYU Police Department on Friday.

Maybe Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, can file a bill exempting vandals from prosecution if they are able to show religious conviction motivated their vandalism.

Wimmer's kindred spirit? • The Legislature is poised to pass Rep. Carl Wimmer's bill designating the M1911 Browning hand gun as Utah's official state firearm.

It's interesting to see who Wimmer, R-Herriman, and the lawmakers who share his vision are aligned with intellectually.

In the political biography of the Bolshevik revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin by Stephen F. Cohen, the author points out that Bukharin Marxism stemmed from a humanitarian viewpoint, that he came to vehemently oppose Joseph Stalin's dictatorial style and eventually saw little difference between Stalin's Communism and Hitler's Nazism.

Bukharin eventually was executed by the Stalin regime.

The author wrote that to Bukharin, fascism as well as Stalinism relied on violence and contempt for human achievement.

He cited an article Bukharin had written in the 1930s in which he made his point by quoting a Nazi poet, who said: "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning."

Careful what you wish for? • Remember in 2000 when Sen. Orrin Hatch ran for president and finished a respectable 12th out of 13 Republican hopefuls?

Hatch's term in the U.S. Senate was up that year and he didn't want to give up his seat if he lost his presidential bid. So, in deference to Hatch, the Legislature passed a law allowing a candidate to run simultaneously for the presidency and for the U.S. Senate.

That law is still on the books, and though it was passed as a favor to Hatch, it could become the good senator's bane.

A recent poll indicated that former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. had the best chance of unseating Hatch in the 2012 Republican fight for the nomination.

There also is wide speculation that Huntsman will run for president next year.

So because of the "Let's Help Orrin Hatch" bill 11 years ago, Huntsman could run for president and still run against Hatch for the Senate as a consolation prize.