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The Top Story: Salt Lake City's no-affection zone, the Main Street Plaza
In a storm that combined the issues of separation of Church and State, the Mormon Church's work against equal rights for gays and the double standard that queer people face every day, the arrest of Matt Aune and Derek Jones grabbed the attention of gay blogs this week. Jones and Aune shared a hug and a kiss in Salt Lake City's Main Street Plaza and were approached by a security guard who told them to leave because their behavior was inappropriate. Feeling "targeted", they refused and the guard forcibly detained them and had them arrested for trespassing. So, who took a look at this story and had a notable take on the incident? Let's count them down. The ACLU of Utah Part of the story is the controversial history of the Main Street Plaza which, according to reports, is a major part of Salt Lake City's downtown and an important pedestrian passageway but is private property. The ACLU of Utah has long fought the church from owning a public space and now that battle has gained national attention. The civil rights organization has since created a resource page on the issue, which helps anyone looking to better understand the issue to become better informed. GLAAD GLAAD put its Media Matters hat on this week and compared the local news' coverage and noticed a difference in how two Mormon-Church-owned media outlets — NBC affiliate KSL-TV and the Deseret News — reported the story differently. Most notably, GLAAD noticed how the two news outlets gave a very different story about the kiss-in protest. While other news outlets reported around 100 protestors, the church-owned outlets cut the number down to 60 or "dozens". GLAAD notes that this is just another blemish for the Deseret News, which was charged with "dereliction of journalistic duty" by the Columbia Journalism Review for its Proposition 8 coverage. The Salt Lake Tribune As a fan of original documents, cheers to the Salt Lake Tribune for making the police report available. Considering how I've seen some discussion of the incident include things like "It does not take much research to find out the couple was doing more than just kissing... They were making out and all over each other. (The police reports are public information.)" It's valuable to be able to look at the report and see that comments like that are a flat-out lie. KSL-TV I was warned by GLAAD and I was still surprised by the level of journalism fail that can be found in KSL's coverage. It may be bad when the media tried to look at opposing sides in a story and then lazily fails to fact-check both stories, but KSL barely bothers to consider that there may be a side other than the church's. (Admittedly, it looks like the station's reporting may have improved since then.) KTVX-TV I wasn't expecting much in checking out the local news but I was surprised when I saw how ABC affiliate KTVX's Mark Zinni handled the story. In attempting to cover both sides of the controversy, the station talked with Jones and Aune — who are even allowed to demonstrate the kind of kiss they say started the incident — and stop to include footage of opposite-sex couples being affectionate in the plaza and not facing harassment by security guards like Jones and Aune. Submitted by on Thu, 2009-07-16 17:13. |
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God, they're cute!
You're so bad
But I laughed when I read that. Yes, if they set up a kissing booth just outside the Mormon/Dixon line, I would stand for hours to kiss them. Just because it would be political -not because I enjoy kissing adorable gay men, no not that! Really it would have nothing to do with the cutness of their cause. Well, maybe a little.
Being out is not "being an activist." It is being honest. Unfortunately it's such a rare commodity in this world that honesty often seems like activism.
I hope they get a shark of a lawyer and sue everyone involve.
Yet another reason I don't care for Utah
Once again I see what lows that theocratic state is capable of perpetrating. It's things like this that make me wish there'd me a politician with the grapes to actually codify teh separation of church and state.
"We are all given one thing by which our lives are measured, one determination. Mine are the stories which can change or not change the world. It doesn't matter which as long as I continue to tell the stories." -Sherman Alexie
Interesting...
I find it fascinating that certain apparant public areas can be given rules that are unposted. It makes me wonder, as Bard23 mentioned, that a religious institution can act like Iranian religious police or Taliban in our nation and single out people just being themselves in public like this. Makes me wonder if the same thing would happen in the same place if the couple were straight and it was a proposal situation.
My own sister (she is an ordained minister) told my mother recently how she couldn't attend our wedding because her presence alone would sanctify a union seen as wrong in the eyes of God... yet we would always be welcome in her home and that she liked my partner personally. It seems picking and choosing on the basis of religion is catching...
How singularly innocent I look this morning.
I always just smirk when a
wow!
Harsh rating dude! lol
How singularly innocent I look this morning.
Sorry your sister's a b*tch
Sorry your sister's a b*tch... and a lousy historian too! Lior nails it -- Marriage AND the ministry have both been radically redefined in the last 40 years... to accommodate women! You are totally right about Theocracy too... always a bad idea.
I had to laugh with my mom, who refused to sign her Church's petition against marriage equality and in favor of "religious tradition". When the women pressed her, she said "If you believed in religious tradition we wouldn't be discussing this IN the church, we'd be outside it - with scarves on our heads!" LOL
HAVE A GREAT WEDDING!
I am heading to a six-year anniversary, and it meant more to me and affected me more deeply than I can fully express.
Thanks!
Thanks for the support! What is great is that we have so many older people (over 70) coming that it is great to see the older generation support us as well as our peers. At my partner's annual family reunion this weeked, an 86 year old uncle came over and personally asked if I was excited and said, "you two need to just keep moving forward, don't let others stand in your way." This is a man who has a reputation for being closed with his feelings and his own children were shocked when I told them what he had said. This is also a man who almost 50 years ago refused with his wife to go to a wedding because his wife's brother was marrying a Catholic. How times have changed! We should not underestimate the ability for our older people to change too.
How singularly innocent I look this morning.
I would protest UTAH!!
I know all on Mormon Church and their teaching is not true in Christianity, It was found by Joseph Smith Jr. in mid-1880's. He made up his wild stories to make his weak-willed people to believe him. he had more than two dozen wives. Why they arrest two men who love others?
Call every gay couple in USA to come to Utah and make out front of a false church!
Just frick them!
PS: Matt and Derek are really cute couple!
The reality of the church is besides the point
Freedom of religion and all that. I think the real issue is how elements of the faith are being placed in opposition to a pluralistic society. They clearly delineate civil and religious marriage, in how one gets the civil marriage before the Temple one. They really should not be insisting on their religious standards for civil marriage.
Churches and marriage
You see, a lot of Americans don't get this because in this country we allow clergy to act as representatives of the state for the purpose of performing marriages.
However, it is the marriage license issued by the state, and not the ceremony in front of the altar, that makes one legally-married. Remember that a lot of religions, including Roman Catholics and Mormons, actively acknowledge, and even highlight this difference for doctrinal purposes. Neither faith will, for example, consider a courthouse marriage as "real". Both insist that members of their religions have ceremonies performed in church according to church ritual.
So a double-standard is being applied here. Mormons don't consider marriages performed outside their church as valid, at least in a religious sense, anyway. That applies as much to other Christian ceremonies as to civil ones.
Church opinions in this sort of thing are, therefore, not valid anyway. Their doctrinal stance will always denigrate marriages not overseen by their church. So therefore their position should be irrelevant.
Just because a marriage is legal under the law doesn't mean that this has any impact on any church. For example, Roman Catholic priests commonly require that both particpants in a marriage be confirmed Catholics. "Mixed" marriages are usually only allowed by very liberal priests on the down low. This is a matter of church policy. The fact that any non-related male/female couple can legally get married doesn't expose the Church to any lawsuits if they refuse to, for example, marry a Catholic to a Protestant.
So common arguments like the Catholics and Mormons (among others) have been trying to sucker people with, that legalizing same-sex marriages will result in priests being thrown in prison for refusing to perform such weddings are blatant lies. Churches merely act as a proxy for the state in performing marriages within their denomination. They are not obligated to perform any marriage.
Hence they really shouldn't have a say here.
Yes!