The state legislature is proceeding in fine form this year. The state is facing an unprecedented budget shortfall at the same time demand for state services is expanding. Things are pretty complicated. But when the going gets tough, you can always count on the Utah Legislature to abandon the hard stuff and move right into moral crusades. And when it gets really tough, you can always count on Senator Chris Buttars from South Jordan to embarrass us all.
There was a package of legislation this year that dealt with extending basic anti-discrimination rights to gays, providing for designations of hospital visitation rights to partners, inheritance, and similar items. The whole package landed well short of the kind of domestic partnership/civil union legislation that several other states have adopted without knocking the planets out of alignment. But the Utah legislature was having no part of that. Apparently the Bible tells them that it is OK to evict or fire somebody because they are gay. The Bible also says that if your wife is barren, it’s OK to skrog the milkmaid, and slavery is OK.
The legislation never had a chance, but it started a mostly rational discussion about what is essentially a human-rights issue. Then Senator Buttars got into the act. Buttars told a TV reporter that he believes homosexuals are the greatest internal threat to the security of the nation, and compared them – unfavorably – to Islamic terrorists. So let’s see, people in love who want to get married are more dangerous than a bunch of Paleolithic fanatics who want to blow up dams or set off radioactive bombs in the nation’s cities. Well, you just can’t argue with thinking like that.
Of course there was a predictably outraged reaction to Buttars’ comments. Senate leadership took swift action and removed him from a couple of important committee assignments. He was quickly punished. But when your listen to the leadership talking about it, they all said they fully agreed with Buttars. There was nothing wrong with what he said. He was punished because they had put a gag order on him not to discuss the issue after creating the same kind of stink last year. His “sin” was speaking out when Senate leadership had told him to remain silent on the issue. Within the legislature, the controversy is over discipline and the power of leadership, not being an idiot and embarrassment. The legislature is all about idiocy and embarrassment.
The legislation died in committee, but Buttars will live to embarrass another day. You have to wonder about the people of South Jordan who keep electing this guy.
But there are tiny cracks in the wall of stupidity. The governor has been pushing some changes in the state liquor-control act that would abolish the private-club system. If the legislation passes, which is anything but certain, a bar in Utah would be a bar. Visitors would be spared the ritual of joining the club by filling out a membership application (none of which has ever been declined), and paying a membership fee. It’s a dark day for secret handshakes. Tourists in Park City could wander up and down Main Street enjoying the night life without having to fill out the paperwork a half dozen times.
The bill is even more revolutionary. It would allow a restaurant with a counter-like seating area to serve a drink over the bar. This one is so weird it is hard to explain. There is apparently something wicked about serving a drink across the bar. The wait staff in a restaurant now has to pour the drink behind the bar (hidden from view by a partition called the Zion Curtain), then walk around to the front of the bar and serve the customer by reaching over his or her shoulder. The food (and Mountain Dew) can be served across the bar, but the alcoholic drink has to be walked around. That’s state law. Somehow, that makes us all safer on the highways, and prevents alcoholism. Of course, if you are in a private club and have filled out the necessary paperwork in triplicate, the bartender can hand a drink across the bar. Because of the magic paperwork you won’t become a raging alcoholic when served across the bar in a private club.
Personally, I’m pretty hard pressed to determine the difference between a private club with a good food-service operation and a restaurant with full liquor service. But in one you have to hide the margarita mixer and carry the glass around the counter, and in the other you can mix and serve like in normal places.
The governor’s premise is that the private-club system really doesn’t serve any purpose. It’s confusing. And like Senator Buttars, it reinforces the state’s well-deserved image as being a little weird.
Of course nothing is that simple. Elimination of paperwork is always an issue with the Republican legislature. Some want to replace the private club membership with an electronic scan of drivers licenses of people buying alcohol. These scans would be stored in some data base somewhere, for some purpose. The apparent goal is to limit underage drinking. How a computer scan and stored data base achieves that any better than the waiter looking at a drivers license like they do now is unclear. But it sounds both expensive and invasive to me.
If the legislators really wanted to do something meaningful about drunk driving, they would fund the highway patrol, which is staffed at about the same level it was 25 or 30 years ago, despite the state’s population having doubled in that time. Glass partitions, membership applications, and arcane rules about being able to pass a glass over the counter if your license is printed on the right color of paper really don’t seem to have much to do with keeping the guy off the road who downs a pint of vodka that he bought at the liquor store on his way home from work.
It’s not at all clear that the private-club legislation will pass. It made it out of committee, but it makes far too much sense to win the votes of Senator Buttars and his peers.
Tom Clyde served as Park City attorney in the 1980s and is the author of “More Dogs On Main Street.” He has been a columnist at The Park Record for more than 20 years.