If you’re not a married heterosexual, a male who regards himself as having a natural right to dominate women, or a women who understands that her place is to passively obey her man and spit a quiver of children out of her vagina like a machine gun, then the little middle of nowhere town in Utah named Kanab would like you to know that you’re not welcome there…

KANAB – After unanimously endorsing a conservative think tank’s resolution supporting the "natural family," Kanab’s City Council is coming under fire – naturally.

Gay-rights advocates and even some residents are scolding city leaders for embracing a nonbinding proposal that:

* Labels marriage between a man and a woman as "ordained of God."

* Sees homes as "open to a full quiver of children."

* Envisions young women "growing into wives, homemakers and mothers and . . . young men growing into husbands, home builders and fathers."

Valerie Larabee, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of Utah in Salt Lake City, finds such language archaic and offensive.

"It doesn’t address what the landscape of the American family looks like today," she said Tuesday.
She said the concept of family "has evolved in a lot of different ways, and it is sad when government discriminates against the rights of families."

Kanab waitress Marina Johnson, a single mother of three, agrees, arguing that the resolution stigmatizes those who fall outside its limiting language.

"It should not matter if a couple is gay or single or what their religious affiliation is or whether they believe in God," she said. "It is not right that [someone’s partner] be denied medical benefits just because they are not married in the traditional way."

Instead, she says, "people should be allowed to do the right thing and take care of the people they love."

But Kanab Councilman Anthony Chatterley backs the measure "wholeheartedly."

"I support the values, hopes and goals stated in the resolution," he said. Kanab "is a strong, family-oriented community. It always has been, and we would like to see this continue."

Carol Sullivan voted for the resolution – pitched by the conservative Sutherland Institute – last week when it was introduced by Mayor Kim Lawson. But the council’s sole woman did so with some reservations.

"I saw no reason to vote against it because it is nonbinding," she said, noting that no one spoke out against it. "But I did wonder why it should be a government issue."

Okay…let me get this straight lady…you’re a conservative and you voted for a resolution even though you weren’t sure it was something government should be involved in?  Digby’s Right, conservativism doesn’t mean anything anymore other then pure unadulterated right wing tribalism.

Kanab’s problem however, is that it fancies itself a tourist destination.  And now, some of the tourists, and the people who make their living on the tourist trade, are a tad pissed…

"Recently read about your vote to censure anyone other than . . . heterosexual, childbearing couples. Even though I fit that bill, I am so disturbed by your actions that I am rescheduling my travel plans to avoid Kanab completely," reads one e-mail sent to the city.

"Y’all are silly," reads another e-mail, obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune through the Government Records Access and Management Act.

And a northern Utah woman vows to stop visiting Kanab because the resolution supports "prejudice, discrimination and subtle social cruelties."

Such responses from potential hotel-staying, souvenir-buying, restaurant-dining visitors worry Hallisey, executive director of the Kane County Office of Tourism and Film Commission.

"With 700 of 1,000 [hotel] rooms in the county here in Kanab, it’s a viable tourist location," he says.

No, it isn’t.  I’ve driven through Kanab several times, and the operative word there is through.  I stopped for the night there once and swore afterwords I’d never do that again.  There’s nothing there worth seeing, and the accommodations there are pitiful for the price they expect you to pay.  Kane county is about as empty as a patch of Utah gets.  Bryce Canyon is in Garfield county, Zion National Park is almost entirely in Washington county, and the various locations of Dixie National Forest (I think it’s some kind of franchise) are scattered in the surrounding counties. 

Just about all Kanab has going for it are those motel rooms, none of which get better then three diamonds in my Triple-A guidebooks.  Oh, and its own little Hollywood Walk Of Fame, which is basically nothing but a series of placards erected on the sidewalk of the main drag, that breathlessly tell you about any Hollywood western that might have been filmed anywhere within miles of the place.  As I read those things I was actually embarrassed for the people of that town, but it’s on that basis that Kanab likes to call itself "little Hollywood".  When all the good sightseeing is somewhere else, you go with what you’ve got.

The evening I was there, after I settled into my motel room, I took my camera and strolled the main drag, looking in the little tourist shops, scouting for anything worth bringing back home.  I struck up a brief conversation with a young high school aged girl working the cash register alone in one of them.  The common conversational theme you get from most people that age, living in towns like that, is their almost panic stricken need to get the hell out of there by any means necessary.  No prisoner walking a cell in San Quenton is as determined to find a way to escape as these kids are.  We’d not exchanged two sentences I think, before she was telling me about her plans to go live somewhere else.  That particular girl’s ticket out, she was convinced, was to go to California and appear on American Idol.  As we talked I swear every time I tried to turn the conversation to what life in the area was like, she would always yank it right back to her upcoming appearance on American Idol and how that would be the thing that would get her out of that there and to some better place.  By the time I’d walked out of her store, I was gripped by a need to get the hell out of Kanab too.  But I’d already paid for my room.

Kanab is a place highway travelers stop on the way to someplace else.  If it has any other source of income besides those 700 motel rooms and the few eateries and curio shops along it’s main drag I’d like to know what it is.  So you’d expect that they’d at least not give anyone a reason to keep on driving.

But no…

The resolution is a "slam to everybody, including those who fit their definition of a natural family," Brunner says. "We’re becoming a diverse community so there are more who feel comfortable about speaking out."

That includes those who support the resolution.

"I salute Mayor Kim Lawson and the council," writes Katie Thomas, who noted she came to the area 32 years ago from California seeking a quieter way of life. "Many of those who are offended and opposed to the proclamation…may have an agenda that would bring the kind of changes that could redefine all that we came for."

The Rev. Doug Hounshell says he "thanks God for a community that doesn’t think it has to be ‘gay-friendly.’ "

"We don’t mean to be mean-spirited," says Hounshell, pastor of Cliffview Chapel Baptist Church in Kanab. "But the message to a homosexual might be that this is probably not the friendliest town for that type of thing."

No Doug…it isn’t that you don’t mean to be mean spirited.  It’s that you are and you just want everyone to politely ignore that fact while you’re busy cutting your town’s throat to satisfy your cheapshit prejudices.

What’s interesting here is that for all this moral posturing going on, the actual resolution that the Kanab city council passed is hard to locate.  It’s modeled on a boilerplate Natural Family Resolution that the theocratic Sutherland Institute came up with, and has been pushing in Utah.  But it’s hard to find a copy of this resolution, even on Sutherland’s own website.  It took a little digging, but here it is:

Resolution 1-1-06R The Natural Family: A Vision the City of Kanab

Whereas, the natural family is the fundamental unit of society and is entitled to protection in Utah by local and state governments; and

Whereas, the natural family is the locus of the true common good and that citizens of the City of Kanab, Utah help ourselves when we help our families; and

Whereas, the natural family results in healthier, happier, more productive, and more civically-engaged adults as well as healthier, happier, safer, and better educated children; and

Whereas, most serious public pathologies – including crime, delinquency, illegal drug use, domestic violence, long-term poverty, and low educational achievement – are closely associated with family breakdown and disorder; then,

Be it resolved, that the City of Kanab, Utah adopts the following vision as a guide to policy formation and public action:

We envision a local culture that upholds the marriage of a woman to a man, and a man to a woman, as ordained of God.  This culture affirms marriage as the best path to health, security, fulfillment, and joy.  It casts the home built on marriage as the source of true political sovereignty and ordered liberty.  It also holds the household framed by marriage to be the primary economic unit, a place marked by rich activity, material abundance, and broad self-reliance.  This culture treasures private property in family hands as the rampart of independence and liberty.  It celebrates the marital sexual union as the unique source of new human life.  We see our homes as open to a full quiver of children, the source of family continuity and social growth.  We envision young women growing into wives, homemakers, and mothers; and we see young men growing into husbands, home-builders, and fathers.

We see true happiness as the product of persons enmeshed in vital bonds with spouses, children, parents, and extended family.  We look to a landscape of family homes, lawns, and gardens busy with useful tasks and ringing with the laughter of many children.  We envision parents as the first educators of their children.  We see homes that also embrace extended family members who need special care due to age or infirmity.  We view local neighborhoods and communities as the second locus of political sovereignty.  We envision a freedom of commerce that respects and serves family integrity.  And we look to local government that holds the protection of the natural family to be their first responsibility.

NOW THEREFORE, it is hereby resolved by the City of Kanab, Utah, that the Natural Family: A Vision for the City of Kanab shall be in effect until further resolution.

Dated this 10 day of January, 2006.

A full quiver of children.  You’d have had to see it with your own eyes to appreciate the desperation I saw in one young girl’s face one evening in Kanab, which by the way is not all that far from Colorado City, where the men of the Lee’s Ferry polygamists are apparently having their way with teenaged girls.  Do you folks out there have any clue what happens to a lot of teenage kids who go to Hollywood looking for a way out of the suffocating woman hating mind numbing hopelessly bigoted and going nowhere fast hell holes you’ve made of your communities?  There’s your Vision for the future.  Right there.