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| Julian Eltinge |
1917 Julian Eltinge In Cousin Lucy at the
Salt Lake Theater Julian Eltinge, America’s supreme interpreter of charming
young women is one of the most popular stars on the American stage, comes to
this city in his latest success “Cousin Lucy” written by Charles Klien at the Salt Lake Theater for two days only starting with a matinee next Monday, (Arbor
Day). Deseret News Salt Lake City, UT
1953 P Geary, 29, of 1644 Oak Street waived a
preliminary hearing in city court on a sodomy charge. He is held under $3000
pending trial in the Second District Court.
1954 Charles L Porter, 36, of M-31 Arsenal
Villa pleaded guilty in Second District Court to a charge of sodomy. Ogden
Standard Examiner
1975-Clyde Tolson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's
companion, died. 
1985- Tammy Twitchell former owner of the
Unicorn and Rich Hill opened a new bar called The Journal at 1600 Wall Street
in Ogden, Utah
1985-At the International AIDS Conference in
Atlanta Georgia researchers estimated that the number of Americans exposed to
the AIDS virus was 2 million and predicted that the number of heterosexual
cases would increase.
1986-Monday- Utah Technical College’s student
senate once again voted against giving official school recognition there to a
Gay Student Union.
1990 GAY MURDER JURY ACQUITS S.L. MAN IN
SLAYING United Press International A 3rd District Court jury on Friday
acquitted Marty Ray Withers of the 1989 stabbing death of a motorist who gave
the defendant a ride. The jury reached its verdict following nearly two hours
of deliberations by an eight-member 3rd District Court jury. Withers, 28, Salt
Lake City, had been charged with second-degree murder in the April 7, 1989,
slaying of Darrell N. Webber, 38, Salt Lake City, in a Murray parking lot.
Investigators said Webber died from stab wounds in the leg and chest. Withers
testified he was intoxicated and stabbed Webber in self-defense after the
victim had partially undressed and made homosexual advances toward him.
- 1990 Saturday- I tossed and turned all night long sick to death in my stomach. Finally about 4:30 a.m. I was so violently ill that I threw up. I never throw up and for me to do so means I was really ill. Darrell Webber's murderer being freed to walk the streets has affected me more than I realized. Being around true evil is physically sickening. In the evening I went out to the Hot Springs to relax. A street musician named Moby was there singing and strumming his guitar. It was a restful, magical way to end a day that started out so poorly. (Ben Williams Journal)
1996 Sunday Coach Has Left Sad Legacy --
Parsons Still Shunned; She Broke Most
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| Pam Parson |
Essential Bond Of Profession By Liz
Chandler Charlotte Observer- Pam Parsons calls herself the game's "worst
nightmare." Once one of the most successful coaches in women's basketball,
Parsons left the sport with its most painful scandal - she had an affair with a
player. Now, for the first time since her 1984 trial and a stay in prison,
Parsons tells her story. The former South Carolina coach admits an array of
financial, academic, recruiting and sexual improprieties. And she offers no
excuses. "I want to apologize," she says with tears in her eyes,
"to all those players I hurt, and I want to apologize to their parents.
They gave me their most prized possessions - their daughters. Those girls had
hopes and dreams, and I let them down." Women's college basketball still
struggles with her legacy. She brought intensity and style to her work, but she
also tore at the trust essential to coaching. She made stereotypes seem true -
that homosexuals pervade women's basketball, that they are untrustworthy and
that they entice impressionable young people. "Pam Parsons left a cloud
over women's basketball," says North Carolina coach Sylvia Hatchell,
incoming president of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association. "For one
thing, people think everybody involved is a lesbian, which isn't anywhere close
to being true. What's worse is that she made it like those people who are gay
don't follow the rules." Those generalizations mean that coaches today can
win recruits by hinting that competing programs are mostly gay; that some
schools shun gay players and coaches; and that the game suffers from that
controversy. Parsons knows she's still an outcast. There's been no other
scandal of such consequence in the 15 years since she coached. "I crossed
the boundaries. I broke the code accepted by the group. I deserved to lose
people's respect," she says. Parsons' first star player, Nancy
Lieberman-Cline, now a commentator for ESPN, says Parsons could have been a
leader in the game. "Pam was a pioneer, and she had some vision," she
says. "But you can't excuse what she did." At 48, Parsons lives in
Atlanta with her former player Tina Buck, 33. They admit now what they hid for
years - an intimate relationship that began when Buck was in high school and
continued while she played for Parsons at USC. They get by on $15,000 a year.
They wear second-hand clothes and perform massage therapy in their small rented
home. Neither has medical insurance. They've spent much of the past decade in
therapy, studying philosophy and trying to recover from their public
humiliation. In telling her story, Parsons wants to put some issues to rest.
Arrogance and deceit, she says, ruined her career. "The rules didn't apply
to me. It got so bad I couldn't even bear to stand in line. I'd sit back there
thinking `I should be at the front of this line. I'm Pam Parsons.' " She
also felt she had no choice but to lie about her homosexuality. "I
constantly wore a mask. I constantly had to lie. . . . There wasn't anyone to
talk to. When you're under that much stress, you don't think clearly." Pat
Head and Pam Parsons were the most talked-about coaches in 1977, recalls USC
athletic director Jim Carlen. He knew Head (now Pat Summitt) would never leave
her Tennessee Lady Vols, so he pursued Parsons at Old Dominion. "I wanted
the best coach out there - and I got her," he says. Parsons had
credentials: She played guard for two Amateur Athletic Union teams that
contended for national titles. She had played college ball at Brigham Young and
held degrees in physical education and exercise physiology. College recruiters
liked her Mormon background and her handsome boyfriend, a world-class
volleyball player. She made a good package, she remembers recruiters saying.
From 1974 to 1977, in her first coaching job, Parsons went 49-31 at Old
Dominion and proved a recruiting wizard, attracting the nation's hottest
prospects, including Nancy Lieberman and Inge Nissen. Despite her success, she
struggled personally. She agonized over her sexuality. "Only murder ranked
worse than homosexuality in my religion," she says. "I didn't know
what to do. It was a terrible struggle. I was dating men, but I almost always
had a secret relationship going with a woman." Parsons left Old Dominion
in 1977 after a squabble over the Monarchs' budget. Rumors swirled about an
affair between Parsons and a player - a brief relationship Parsons only now
admits. From several offers, Parsons chose South Carolina's promise of an
"unlimited" budget and a $35,000 salary - among the highest for
female coaches then. Parsons changed the Carolina Chicks' name and their losing
tradition. The Lady Gamecocks went 24-10 her first year and 27-10 her second.
In 1980, the unranked Gamecocks fought their way into the Final Four -
ultimately finishing third in the nation, with a 30-6 record. At least 18
players quit during her first three years, citing Parsons' temperamental
outbursts and personal attacks. "My way or the highway" became
Parsons' mantra. Parson admits: "I was bouncy with the rules."
Nothing, however, compared with her biggest lapse in judgment.
 |
| Tina Buck |
She allowed her
lover to become her player. Parsons met Tina Buck at an Atlanta bar in August
1980. They danced and flirted. Parsons, then 32, says she didn't know Buck
played basketball or that she was 17. Buck knew Parsons. Almost every
high-school player did. She was thrilled the "Queen of Basketball"
showed interest. "When I met Pam, she was a speeding bullet," Buck
says. "She had this air of `I love life. If you have a problem with me -
tough.' And I was really attracted to that." Their relationship developed
over the next year - off, then on - as Parsons struggled to accept their age
difference. In turmoil, Buck quit high school. On Nov. 2, 1980, the couple got
caught. A private detective, hired by assistant coach Karen Brown, documented
that Buck had spent a night at Parsons' house - violating recruiting rules
because Buck was considered a visiting high-school recruit. Confronted by
athletic director Carlen, Parsons says she admitted her affair. He did not
intervene in her plans to offer Buck a scholarship - a deal worth about $30,000
over four years. "It was totally over my head," Carlen now says.
"I told her I thought it was bad news. But I didn't know what else to
do." Buck's mother, Janet, says she didn't have an inkling. "I just
thought Tina hero-worshiped this woman and that Pam took a professional
interest in Tina," says Janet Buck, an Atlanta secretary and writer. On
April 18, 1981, on an empty stretch at Wrightsville Beach, the couple exchanged
vows. Their bond would hold through an unimaginable storm. A national
championship appeared within Parsons' grasp in the 1981 season. Despite team
troubles, Parsons had signed some of the nation's best players. And pundits
ranked the team No. 2 in the nation. Tina Buck had earned her high-school
equivalency certificate and accepted USC's scholarship. Her 30-point average
and scrappy play brought offers from several colleges. To her, the choice was
clear. "If I had it to do
over, I would have gone to a different
college," Buck says. The Gamecocks won their first seven games that
season. Then, in December 1981, a player told her mother she'd seen Parsons and
Buck embrace and kiss. The mother immediately complained to university
officials. On Dec. 31, 1981, USC's assistant athletic director, Ron Dickerson,
confronted Parsons at her home. She resigned, scrawling a two-sentence note,
citing health problems. But on New Year's Day - Parsons' 34th birthday - she tried
to rescind her resignation. She wanted to negotiate a settlement, including a
gag order, to protect her career. It was too late. On Jan. 2, after beating St.
Joseph's, the Lady Gamecocks, now coached by a man named Terry Kelly, flew back
to Columbia. Parsons met them on the tarmac on a rainy night holding a banner
that read, in part: "WELCOME HOME. I HAVE NOT RESIGNED." Several
players burst into tears, including Tina Buck. In its February 1982 swimsuit
edition, Sports Illustrated told Pam Parsons' story. One player compared her to
cult leader Jim Jones. An assistant coach charged that Parsons "recruited
with sex in mind." And the story told the world that Pam Parsons, Mormon
girl from Utah, was a lesbian. Parsons sued the magazine, claiming that the
story was untrue and that it ruined her career. She sought $75 million. In
1984, she and Buck took the stand in a Columbia courtroom, telling lie after
lie. They denied they were lesbians. They denied they were intimate. Then Babs
DeLay, a disc jockey from Salt Lake City, testified that Parsons was a
card-carrying member of a gay bar there and that the couple had visited 20 to
30 times. "That's the one thing people ask me most: Why did you lie?"
Parsons says. "All I can say is I wasn't thinking clearly. I was still
rebelling." The couple pleaded guilty to perjury. They spent 109 days in a
minimum-security prison in Lexington, Ky. In the 11 years since their release,
they've worked as house painters, waitresses and yard keepers, making less than
$5,000 some years. They endured snide remarks and harassment, including a
Columbia theater's production of a play mocking their story. They've spent
years mending ties with their families. As for basketball, Parsons says she'd
like to coach or help market the fledgling women's pro league - "if
they'll have me." Now, she has little to do with the game, some years
watching the Final Four on TV. Parsons may no longer have money or fame or a
role in the sport she loves. But she now has freedom she never knew. She believes
she lost her way because she felt forced to lie about her sexuality. Deceit,
she says, robs your sense of right and wrong. "I finally found what I was
looking for - peace. I'm not afraid of being found out. I don't have to lie or
concoct an image. It's an amazing space to be in. It is something I've wanted
more than a national championship." 1996 Seattle Times
1997 Time Magazine carried a picture of Ellen DeGeneres on front cover with the caption "Yep, I'm Gay"
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| Add caption |
1997 Jeffery Calvin Sparks
"Spicoly", age 23, died April 14, 1997, following a courageous battle
with AIDS at his home. Born March 31, 1974, in Salt Lake City to David Allen
and Blanch M. Orgill Sparks. In the short time he was with us every where he
went he made a friend. A special thanks to his beloved Kelly, Dr. Kristen Ries,
Maggie Snyder, Dell Loy Hansen and everyone a Wasatch Property Management. Survivors:
His true love, Kelly Ross; Interment - Draper City Cemetery.
1999 Wednesday April 14 * Gay Straight
Alliances of East High, West High and Cottonwood High meet with Utah State
House Representative Jackie Biskupski 3pm upstairs at the Center *LECTURE Lesbian Fertility Lecture Series: You Don't
Need a Man! 7pm at The Center
14 April 2000 Pride Fest 2000 held a Gay & Lesbian Film
Festival Friday April 14 – Saturday April 22 at Taggart
Student Center
Auditorium Utah
State University,
Logan Utah.
Co-sponsored by: USU Departments of: Communications; History; Sociology, Social
Work & Anthropology; Women & Gender Research Institute; USU Pride!
Alliance; KUED Television; G.L.S.N. Matinee - $2.50 Evening Feature - $3.00 Double
Feature - $5.00 Full festival Pass: Students - $20.00 Non-Students - $25.00 ASK
YOUR PROFESSOR ABOUT EXTRA CREDIT Movie Show Times: Friday April 14: 2:00 pm – Boy’s Life (5
Short Features) (Post Movie Discussion) 6:00 pm – It’s in the Water (Comedy)
(Post Movie Discussion) 8:00 pm – Love, Valour, Compassion (Drama) (Post Movie
Discussion) Saturday April 15: 3:00 pm – Out of the Past, Friends &
Neighbors (Documentaries) (Post Movie Discussion) 6:00 pm – Torch Song Trilogy
(Drama) (Post Movie Discussion) 8:00 pm – Neptune’s Rocking Horse (Drama) (Post
Movie Discussion) Monday April 17: 2:00 pm – Friends & Neighbors
(Documentary) (Post Movie Discussion) 6:00 pm – The Incredibly True Adventure
of Two Girls in Love (Comedy) (Post Movie Discussion) 8:00 pm – The Edge of
Seventeen (Drama) (Post Movie Discussion) Tuesday April 18: 2:00 pm – Out of
the Past (Documentary)(Post Movie Discussion) 6:00 pm – Boy’s Life (5 Short
Features) 8:00 pm – Being at Home with Claude (Drama)(Post Movie Discussion) Thursday
April 20: 6:00 pm – Love, Valour, Compassion (Drama) 8:00 pm – Being at Home
with Claude (Drama) Friday April 21: 2:00 pm – Torch Song Trilogy (Drama) 6:00
pm – It’s in the Water (Comedy) 8:00 pm – The Incredibly True Adventure of Two
Girls in Love Saturday April 22: 4:00 pm – Neptune’s Rocking Horse (Drama) 6:00
pm – The Edge of Seventeen (Drama)
8:00 pm – Killer Condom (Comedy)
 |
| Jennifer Nuttall |
2003 WOMEN'S WELLNESS PROGRAM AT THE CENTER
Calling ALL GLBT Women- We are holding the following focus groups for lesbian,
bisexual & transgender women: please come and be a part of helping to
design the FIRST EVER GLBT Women's Wellness Program in Utah!! Ages 14-29 : Wednesday April 16th GLCCU Multi-purpose room
: 6-8pm Ages 30-44 : Monday April 21st
GLCCU Gallery Room : 6:30-8:30pm Over 45:
Tuesday April 29th GLCCU Gallery Room : 7-9pm Women of Color: TBA Please call me for more info We need ALL
sorts of GLBT women to participate, and so far we don't have enough people. Your paricpation would be greatly
appreciated. You do not have to have any
particular knowledge or expertise on health or wellness issues. This will be a brainstrorming session to
determine the direction the wellness program will take, and your ideas and
feedback are very important. Once again, please let me know if you can make it
and how many people you will be bringing with you. Also if you know ANY women of color could you
pass this info along to them? I would
appreciate it.Thank you! --Jennifer NuttallGLCCU - Project Coordinator
2005 LGBT Resource Center-University of
Utah's 1st Queer Spelling. Queer (kwir) adj 1.differing from what is usual or
ordinary; off; singular; strange Come one, come all, to the University of
Utah's first Queer Spelling Bee ever! This fabulous event is being held to have
fun, and to promote Queer community empowerment for EVERYONE on campus, and we
mean ALL! When: April 14 Where: 7
pm At this time, we are inviting people
of all sexual orientations and gender identities, to submit their suggestions
and ideas for queer words to cmilne@sa.utah.edu no later than March 25, subject
line should read "Queer Spelling Bee". Words should be in good,
campy, taste. Examples of words are, but are not limited to; taffeta, tea cozy
and Degeneres.
2005 Gay students recount their Day of
Silence Protest: Some tell of the taunting and verbal abuse they received from
other students during the event By Jason Bergreen The Salt Lake Tribune Addie
Benson-Kingsland smiled, joked and laughed as she told a predominantly
homosexual group of teens at the "Night of Noise" barbecue how tortured
she felt forcing herself into silence Wednesday. "I was silent for 10
hours today and it almost killed me because I normally talk a lot," she
said. The bisexual 10th-grader at Salt Lake City's West High School purposely
kept her mouth shut in protest of what she and others called the silence that
is forced upon the nation's homosexual community through harassment, prejudice
and discrimination. This is the second year that Utah students have taken part
in The Day of Silence celebration, which began in Virginia in 1996. "I
think I raised some awareness, if not with one person, with a few people," Benson-Kingsland said.
About three dozen Salt Lake County high school and college students, who also
refused to speak during the nine-hour vow of silence, talked up a storm at the
barbecue Wednesday night at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Community
Center of Utah. The gathering in downtown Salt Lake City was complete with beef
and veggie burgers, hot dogs, a howling spring wind and Pink Floyd music. Kenny
Knapp, an 18-year-old student at Horizonte High School, said 23 of his
classmates went the day without making a peep. "We had a lot of people
hate us, but we stuck together in a group," Knapp said. Though not a
homosexual himself, Knapp protested on behalf of his homosexual brother despite the taunting and
name-calling by other students. Local culinary student Brandon Olsen also said
some students at his school laughed at his silent protest. He claimed some
students have even made death threats to him and his friends in the past
because of their sexual orientation. "It hasn't been physical yet, but I
know it's going to get there," he said. Tony Diaz, a gay student at West
High School and president of the school's Gay and Straight Alliance program,
admitted breaking his silence after only three hours. "I tried hard but
I'm in charge of the GSA, and I had to talk to school officials," Diaz
said. The Gay and Straight Alliance leader said
Wednesday's protest helped fill a void left when members of the homosexual
community are kept from expressing
themselves. "It's the absence of a voice that's usually around, and
you just know something should be done about it," Diaz said.
"Something is wrong."
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| Becky Moss |
2005 Thursday, The following is part of a
series for the Utah AIDS Foundation's 20th anniversary in 2005. Becky Moss has
been at the forefront of the war against AIDS since the very beginning. A
prominent lesbian activist since she began hosting KRCL-FM's Concerning Gays
and Lesbians in 1979, by December 1985 Becky had lost more than 50 friends to
the disease. She said on-air in 1987 that "this thing called AIDS is going
to touch every single one of you, intimately, by the year 2000." Only a
few years into the plague then, she didn't think it could get any more personal
than it already had. "Here I'm telling people how intimately it can touch
you, and I didn't know that my sister had already gone through
seroconversion," Becky says. "She went through seroconversion in
November 1985." Nearly ten years later, Becky lost her sister, Peggy Tingey,
and Peggy's son Chance, to AIDS. "I cursed God," she says. "I
said, 'Listen, I told you that I was already touched intimately.' I cursed God.
The male Christian God, the female God, I cursed them all I was so angry."
In 1982, Becky was one of the first people in the country to mention HIV on the
radio. For 20 years she and her various co-hosts talked about AIDS and its
effects on the entire community - straight and gay. Early on, she was
outspoken, adamant that this disease should not be called GRID (gay-related
immune deficiency) and that anyone, of any sexuality, could become infected.
"In 1985, the newest publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves had come out,
and there was one short paragraph about AIDS and it said 'This is primarily a
gay man's disease; women don't have to worry about it,'" she says.
"And I found exception with it at the time because I did think women had
to worry about it. I didn't see how it could affect only one sex, and I knew it
was touching us because I was grieving. We, as activists, were all grieving.
When we found out as lesbians that our likelihood of acquiring HIV was very
low, even then we didn't really believe them because we knew a couple where one
of the women was a sex worker and the two of them shared needles; they were
both drug users. So, we were disagreeing with everybody saying we were the
second safest population." She pauses, letting a smile slip out.
"Nuns being the safest, of course." Becky was the oldest daughter in
a family of six girls and one boy. Peggy, the middle child, possessed "a
wit you couldn't believe," Becky laughs. "People who met her would
just die; she was quick as could be. The woman never missed an opportunity. I
loved when people would meet her because they'd have to run and tell me the
stories. She would say the most evil things, but they were so funny. Our first
stepmother ... she'd call me up after being with Peggy and say, 'I'm laughing
at something nobody should be laughing at!' Peggy had a delivery system that
was just unbelievable." In 1980, Peggy had a daughter, Mandy. Through the
early-80s, she "went through a real well stage," Becky says. But in
the mid-80s, Peggy met a man Becky didn't like. "I hated him immediately,
on sight; I was not polite. He just struck me as someone who didn't tell the
truth and I recognized the signs of intravenous drug use. I recognized the
signs of somebody ... who had sex with men for money. I even said to her, 'This
son-of-a-bitch will give you AIDS.'" Becky didn't tell Peggy specifically
why she disliked this man. "I'd been seeing so much [of AIDS], I assumed
to myself I was being mean to my sister and I was seeing this in
everybody," she says. So at 23, Peggy moved to Chicago with her new
boyfriend. When Peggy returned to Utah, she wasn't well. "She was really
thin, and sickly-looking," Becky says. "My mother got her back on her
feet. She started to live the way she really wanted to." In the late '80s,
Peggy met "a really incredible guy" named Bill Tingey. They were
married in 1989 and Peggy quickly found herself pregnant. On March 7, 1990,
Peggy gave birth to a little boy. The family was ecstatic. "This was the
first boy in our family in 35 years," Becky says. But the baby boy, named
Chance, was not well. Just before giving birth, Peggy found out the current girlfriend
of her ex-boyfriend had just died of AIDS. He was HIV positive and was telling
everyone the girlfriend had given it to him, but Peggy suspected it was really
the other way around. "She started to figure out he was lying," Becky
says. Peggy thought she might be positive, too, but she hadn't been tested - as
far as she knew. "Peggy has this little boy who's sick, and they're
telling us back in 1989 and 1990 that children aren't born with AIDS, that
maybe they're positive for the virus, but they don't have AIDS, that they're
not sick with it, that it's not happening," Becky says. "And of
course the only babies that they're really paying attention to at the time are
in Africa and nobody's paying attention to the African mothers saying, 'My
baby's sick.' People are biased and rude and if you're a person of color they
don't listen to you. But Peggy was white and intelligent and she's pushing the
envelope. Her baby's really sick and we finally get the answer. My father calls
me up at work, and he says, 'They know why the baby's sick, and Peggy's going
to be sick, too, and I can't tell you any more.' And I said, 'Dad, it's AIDS,
isn't it?' Every one of his children, her siblings, every one of us knew. We'd
seen Peggy come back. We saw what she looked like three years before when she
came back [from Chicago]. We saw what it was. None of us are stupid."
Right after she was diagnosed, Peggy decided that she had to do her best to
make sure it didn't happen to anybody else. For the next four and half years
she and Chance became prominent advocates for AIDS education. "They became
very vocal and visible," Becky says. "They ended up with their
photographs on the billboards and buses with all those wonderful guys. They all
showed their faces. You know, now I don't see faces like I did then. They were
part of 'The Faces of AIDS' campaign." Throughout her illness, Peggy
remained her light-hearted self. "She could tell - and make up - dirty
jokes you couldn't believe," Becky says. "One of the companies I
worked for was among the first to get voicemail. Peggy thought voicemail was
there purely for her entertainment. These poor guys I worked with kept getting
all these calls from different sex-related companies!" As part of their
AIDS education work, Peggy and Chance traveled the intermountain region
speaking to media and school & community groups. "One of the places
they loved to go was Richfield [Utah]. Afterward, they'd go to the Richfield
K-mart and the police officers would hang out in front and open the door for
Peggy and Chance," Becky laughs. "Chance grew up believing that
everybody opened doors for him." Chance was very opinionated; he didn't
like going to Idaho, but he loved Montana. "When they'd go up to Idaho
State University, they'd have to inform the whole classroom, 'You're in Montana
today' because Chance would sit there and yell, 'Not Idaho - Montana!'"
Becky says. "The little poop - he was a lot like his mother." Peggy
worked hard to dispel the myths about AIDS, who got infected, and what those
people were like. "She was a white woman with HIV in the early 90s at a
time when everybody truly believed, 'Oh it can't be us; it's gay men and people
of color.'" Becky says. "Peggy said, 'They're going to see that I'm a
woman and I have a little baby and they're going to figure out that women and
babies get it.' But she also made sure people understood that those gay men
were stunning." After Peggy died, her gay friends took Mandy under their
wings. "When the guys knew they were dying, or when they did die,"
Becky says, "the drag queens would leave their dresses to Mandy and her
friends because they knew the little girls would truly enjoy the
dress-up." Even though it cut her life short, Peggy told Becky not to
grieve because of AIDS. "She said it made her immortal," Becky says,
now in tears. "She told me that she was envious of my activism status, but
because of AIDS she got to shine on her own. And she outshone me. She did more
than I ever did, and she and Chance were more effective at it." So
effective, in fact, that even people too young to understand all that
"AIDS" meant - kids Chance's age - responded to him and his mom
intrinsically. "One of my foster kids, Tina, got a hold of me one
day," Becky says. "She said, 'Listen, my little nephew, he saw your
nephew on TV last night and he thinks that Chance is supposed to be his best
friend; can he meet Chance?'" Chance wasn't dangerous to other kids, of
course, but Peggy and Becky were concerned that with all the germs kids usually
carry, they could be dangerous to Chance. But they decided to let the two four
year-old boys meet. "We put the two of them together and Chance had his
feeding tube in his nose, and Tina's nephew, first thing he says, 'Is that an
owie?' and Chance says, 'No, that's not an owie.' And Chance showed some
microscopic little cut on his finger - you know how little people are - and he
explains how, here, this is the owie, and the little boys took off, chatting
like crazy," Becky says. "That little boy is 15 years old now and he
still tells people that Chance was his best friend. He only got to meet Chance
once in person, but Chance was his best friend. Peggy and Chance affected
people a lot, and I think they still do." When Chance was born, Peggy,
Bill, and their families were told that Chance wouldn't make it 4-and-a-half
months. When he died on July 23, 1994, he was 4-and-a-half years old. Peggy was
being tested on some of the drugs of the cocktail - though not the full
cocktail - when Chance died. "She just refused medication after
that," Becky says. "She felt that she'd killed her son. Peggy died of
guilt. She let AIDS kill her." Nine months after Chance, Peggy Tingey died
at the age of 35. As part of her HIV activism, Becky participated in various
community groups with staff from the state health department. At one meeting
just months after Chance was born, she found out that hospitals had been
testing women for the virus for months as part of a study. "It said right
there, on this study, that on the week Chance was born, in the hospital he was born,
that they'd had a positive," she says. "They knew when Chance was
born - the hospital did - that this baby was born to an HIV-positive mother and
he was HIV positive. But because they had so many rules and laws and the
government was saying such garbage, they ... they didn't help them then because
they couldn't. The hospital's hands were tied." "When Chance was born
in 1990, even then we knew that AZT could help prevent spread to some of the
babies," Becky says. "The hospital knew, but they couldn't tell her.
Maybe it wouldn't have helped Chance, maybe not. But Peggy died because Chance
died." Peggy's husband Bill is not HIV positive. Becky says he will not
marry again, nor will he have children again. "He's this gorgeous,
fantastic young man, a father you couldn't believe, and he can't allow himself
to love like that again," Becky says, tears in her eyes. "I lost my
little sister and her son. Bill lost a wife and child. My father had to watch
his grandchild and his daughter die. My whole family had to watch this. We told
Peggy we'd never forget her and we wouldn't let anybody else forget her. She's
a grandmother now. Mandy's baby is 6 weeks old." After more than 20 years
fighting a virus that continues to devastate, Becky Moss has had to take a
break. She says, "In 2001, I stopped doing the radio show, stopped doing
some other things at the [Gay, Lesbian & Transgendered Community] Center. I
couldn't do it anymore; it all caught up with me. I grieve now." Despite
the pain, Becky agreed to be interviewed for the Utah AIDS Foundation's 20th
anniversary because she thought there was something in Peggy and Chance's story
that could help other people. Becky says, crying now, "I still remember
how we believed that we were going to close down the doors of the Foundation
one day. That we were going to have this huge celebration and the disease was
going to be over. And I think I stopped believing. I think that's why I stopped
doing everything, because I stopped believing, and I have to turn it over to
people who still believe because I can't believe anymore. I'm worn out. Let the
people with energy ... I've had too much. I'm so scarred by my history with
HIV. Early mornings I drive to work, and I remember. I can't forget any of
them. In the last few years I've dreamt about them a lot, and they're all
alive. Every one of them."
• People
Profiles "Honoring 20 Years of Care" Since the beginning of the
epidemic, so many people have been impacted by HIV/AIDS. Their stories are our
connection to the past and can inspire us to care for all those who have lived
with this disease. Read these first hand accounts of how HIV/AIDS has impacted
individuals in our community. Becky Moss has been at the forefront of the war
against AIDS since the very beginning. A prominent lesbian activist since she
began hosting KRCL's Concerning Gays and Lesbians in 1979, Becky had lost more
than 50 friends to the disease by December 1985. She said on-air in 1987 that
"this thing called AIDS is going to touch every single one of you,
intimately, by the year 2000." Only a few years into the plague then, she
didn't think it could get any more personal than it already had. "Here I'm
telling people how intimately it can touch you, and I didn't know that my
sister had already gone through sero-conversion," Becky says. "She
became HIV+ in November 1985." Nearly ten years later, Becky lost her
sister, Peggy Tingey, and Peggy's son Chance, to AIDS. "I cursed
God," she says. "I cursed God. The male Christian God, the female
God, I cursed them all I was so angry." In 1982, Becky was one of the
first people in the country to mention HIV on the radio. For more than 20 years
she and her various co-hosts talked about AIDS and its effects on the entire
community - straight or gay. Becky was adamant that this disease should not be
called GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) and that anyone, of any sexuality,
could become infected. "In 1985, the newest publication of Our Bodies,
Ourselves had come out and there was one short paragraph about AIDS and it said
'This is primarily a gay man's disease; women don't have to worry about
it,'" she says. "I found exception with that at the time because I
did think women had to worry about it. I didn't see how it could affect only
one sex, and I knew it was touching us because I was grieving. We, as
activists, were all grieving. When we found out as lesbians that our likelihood
of acquiring HIV was very low, even then we didn't really believe it. We knew a
lesbian couple where one of the women was a sex worker and they shared needles;
they were both drug users. So, we were disagreeing with everybody saying we
were the second safest population. Nuns being the safest, of course."
Becky was the oldest daughter in a family of six girls and one boy. Peggy, the
middle child, possessed "a wit you couldn't believe," Becky laughs.
"People who met her would just die; she was quick as could be. The woman
never missed an opportunity. I loved when people would meet her because they'd
have to run and tell me the stories. She would say the most evil things, but
they were so funny. Our first stepmother . . . she'd call me up to say, 'I'm
laughing at something nobody should be laughing at!' and Peggy had said
it." In the mid-80s Peggy met a man Becky didn't like. "I hated him
immediately, on sight. I just was not polite. I even said to her, 'This
son-of-a-bitch will give you AIDS.' He just struck me as someone who didn't
tell the truth and I recognized the signs of intravenous drug use. I recognized
the signs of somebody . . . who had sex with men for money." Becky didn't
tell Peggy specifically why she disliked this man. "I'd been seeing so
much, I assumed to myself I was being mean to my sister and I was seeing that
in everybody," she says. So at 23, Peggy moved to Chicago with her new
boyfriend. When Peggy returned to Utah, she wasn't well. "She was really
thin, and sickly-looking," Becky says. "My mother got her back on her
feet." In the late '80s, Peggy met "a really incredible guy"
named Bill Tingey. They were married in 1989 and immediately found themselves
pregnant. On March 7, 1990, Peggy gave birth to a little boy. The family was
ecstatic. "This was the first boy in our family in 35 years," Becky
says. But the baby boy, named Chance, was not well. Just before giving birth,
Peggy found out that the current girlfriend of her ex-boyfriend had just died
of AIDS. He was HIV positive and was telling everyone that the girlfriend gave
it to him, but Peggy suspected it was really the other way around. "She
started to figure out he was lying," Becky says. Peggy thought she might
be positive, too, but she hadn't been tested. "Peggy has this little boy
who's sick, and they're telling us back in 1989 and 1990 that children aren't
born with AIDS, that maybe they're positive for the virus, but they don't have
AIDS, that they're not sick with it, that it's not happening," Becky says.
"And of course the only babies that they're really paying attention to at
the time are in Africa and nobody's paying attention to the African mothers
saying, 'My baby's sick.' People are biased and rude and if you're a person of
color they don't listen to you. But Peggy was white and she's pushing the
envelope. Her baby's really sick and we finally get the answer. My father calls
me up at work, and he says, 'They know why the baby's sick, and Peggy's going
to be sick, too, and I can't tell you any more.' And I said, 'Dad, it's AIDS,
isn't it?' Every one of his children, her siblings, every one of us knew. We'd
seen Peggy come back. We saw what she looked like three years before when she
came back. We saw what it was. None of us are stupid." Right after she was
diagnosed, Peggy decided that she had to make sure it didn't happen to somebody
else. For the next four and half years she and Chance became prominent
advocates for AIDS education. "They became very vocal and visible,"
Becky says. "They ended up with their photographs on the billboards and
buses with Barb Barnhardt and some of those wonderful guys. They all showed
their faces. You know, now I don't see faces like I did then. They were part of
the faces of AIDS campaign." Throughout her illness, Peggy remained her
light-hearted, funny self. "She could tell - and make up - dirty jokes you
couldn't believe," Becky says. "One of the companies I worked for was
among the first to get voicemail. Peggy thought voicemail was there purely for
her entertainment. These poor guys I worked with were getting calls from these
different 'sex companies,' and she'd do this off the top of her head." As
part of their AIDS education work, Peggy and Chance traveled the intermountain
region speaking to media and school & community groups. "One of the
places they loved to go was Richfield. Afterwards, they'd go to the Richfield
K-mart and the police officers would hang out in front and open the door for
Peggy and Chance," Becky laughs. "Chance grew up believing that
everybody opened doors for him." Even though it cut her life short, Peggy
told Becky not to grieve because of AIDS. "She said it made her
immortal," Becky says, in tears. "She told me that she was envious of
my activism status, but because of AIDS she got to shine on her own. And she
outshone me. She did more than I ever did, and she and Chance were more
effective at it." So effective, in fact, that even people too young to
understand all that "AIDS" meant - kids Chance's age - responded to
him and his mom intrinsically. "One of my foster kids, Tina, got a hold of
me one day," Becky says. "She said, 'Listen, my little nephew, he saw
your nephew on TV last night and he thinks that Chance is supposed to be his best
friend; can he meet Chance?'" Chance wasn't dangerous to other kids, of
course, but Peggy and Becky were concerned that with all germs kids usually
carry, they could be dangerous to Chance. But they decided to let the two four
year-old boys meet. "We put the two of them together and Chance had his
feeding tube in his nose," Becky says. "And Tina's nephew, first
thing he says, 'Is that an owie?' and Chance says, 'No, that's not an owie.'
And Chance showed some microscopic little cut on his finger - you know how
little people are - and said, here, this is an owie, and the little boys took
off, chatting like crazy. That little boy is 15 years old now and he still
tells people that Chance was his best friend." When Chance was born,
Peggy, Bill, and their families where told that Chance wouldn't make it 4½
months. When he died on July 23, 1994, he was 4½ years old. "Peggy refused medication after
that," Becky says. "She felt that she'd killed her son. Peggy died of
guilt. She let AIDS kill her." Nine months after Chance, Peggy Tingey died
at the age of 35. Peggy's husband Bill is not HIV positive. Becky says he will
not marry again, nor will he have children again. "He's this gorgeous,
fantastic young man, a father you couldn't believe, and he can't allow himself
to love like that again," Becky says, tears in her eyes. "I lost my
little sister and her son. Bill lost a wife and child. My father had to watch
his grandchild and his daughter die. My whole family had to watch this. We told
Peggy we'd never forget her and we wouldn't let anybody else forget her."
After more than 20 years fighting a virus that continues to devastate, Becky
Moss has had to take a break. She says, "In 2001, I stopped doing the
radio show, stopped doing some other things at the Center. I couldn't do it
anymore; it all caught up with me. I grieve now." Despite the pain, Becky
agreed to be interviewed for the Utah AIDS Foundation's 20th year because she
thought there was something in Peggy and Chance's story that could help other
people. Becky says, crying now, "I still remember how we believed that we
were going to close down the doors of the Foundation one day. That we were
going to have this huge celebration and the disease was going to be over. And I
think I stopped believing. I think that's why I stopped doing everything,
because I stopped believing, and I have to turn it over to people who still
believe because I can't believe anymore. I'm worn out. Let the people with
energy . . . I've had too much. I'm so scarred by my history with HIV. Early
mornings I drive to work, and I remember. I can't forget any of them. In the
last few years I dream a lot about them, and they're all alive. Every one of
them."
 |
| Larry Miller Charles Milne |
2006 Miller, U. group to discuss
concerns about talk Questions about his selection arise over his pulling of
movie By Deborah Bulkeley Deseret Morning News 4/14/2006 Utah Jazz owner Larry
H. Miller plans to meet this month with students, faculty and staff at the
University of Utah who have expressed concerns about his upcoming speech on the
campus. Larry Miller Some people at the university had questioned why Miller
was selected as the kick-off speaker for "Discover U Days," given his
decision to pull the gay-romance movie "Brokeback Mountain" from his
theaters. "We're just hoping we can have a really good dialogue between
the university community and Larry Miller," said Charles Milne, program
coordinator for the U. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center.
"I personally hope this will be an opportunity for us to start a
conversation about respecting others and their differences," Milne said.
Miller is scheduled to discuss "The Rewards of Investing in Higher
Education" at noon April 21 in the Union Ballroom. The speech will kick
off the two-day Discover U Days event, which is planned to showcase the
university through free events such as a "Red & White" spring
football game, presentations by researchers, and a health and science fair.
"We want to remind the community that the U. is 'Utah's University,'
" said Fred Esplin, U. vice president for institutional advancement. Milne
said Thursday that the discussion with Miller is scheduled before his speech
but declined to discuss the time or location for the invitation-only meeting to
take place behind closed doors. Some on campus saw Miller's decision to pull
the movie from his theaters as censorship, while others saw it as bigoted after
Miller recently told KTVX-TV that he did so because he was worried about the
breakup of the traditional American family. "There are quite a few
concerns," Milne said. Students are continuing with plans to participate
in a silent protest at Miller's speech, Milne said. An assistant to Miller
declined to comment Thursday, saying Miller was unavailable. For details on
Discover U. Days, visit: www.ucomm.utah. edu/udays or call 801-581-7100.
- 2006 Forwarding a message on behalf of a
coalition of faculty and students at the University of Utah: Please come and be
seen! Bring your family and friends!
After much consultation with faculty and students, we have decided to
stage a celebration of free speech as our form of protest to Larry Miller’s
keynote at the University of Utah. It will take the following shape: GOAL: To
make a strong visual statement that conveys the values of higher education
(open, public dialogue on controversial issues) with dignity, respect and
counter-intuitive openness towards the speaker. HOW: Attend the Larry Miller
keynote wearing a cowboy hat. Please sit in the audience with your cowboy hat
on and listen respectfully to the talk. There will be large banners in the back
and on the sides proclaiming our welcome to Larry Miller but our disapproval of
his banning of the movie Brokeback Mountain. These will be the only signs in
order to foster the strongest visual impact. WHERE: Union Ballroom (first
floor), in the Olpin Student Union, University of Utah WHEN: The keynote begins
at noon on Friday, April 21st, but we suggest arriving about twenty minutes
before the talk. Please, if possible, bring your own hat, but we will have
extra hats on hand. Signed, A Coalition of Concerned Faculty and Students
.jpg) |
| Carol Gnade |
2010
Utah ACLU: All Bark Advocates worry that the ACLU of Utah has lost its
bite. By Eric S. Peterson Salt Lake City Weekly Carol Gnade may have come to
Utah for the skiing, but she stayed for the civil-liberties abuses—or, more
accurately, to defend against them. In 1991, the entrepreneur and social worker
from Madison, Wis., was on a ski vacation when, during a break at a Snowbird
lodge, she heard a news report about the Utah Legislature banning abortions in
the state. She also heard about the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah
challenging the bill and phoned the director to ask what kind of team they had
to challenge the law. She was told it was just the director, another staff
member and a part-time secretary. Gnade asked if she could help. “[The
director] said, ‘Can you come tomorrow?’ ” Gnade recalls with a laugh. “I
decided that skiing didn’t seem like fun to me, so I thought it would be much
more fun to go help with this outrageous Utah Legislature.” Gnade (pictured at
left) would eventually return and take over as executive director of the
watchdog group from 1993 to 2002. Those were fighting years, especially in the
early 2000s, when the ACLU of Utah defended gay-straight alliances in high
schools and took on Salt Lake City for selling a block of Main Street to The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Since 2000, in fact, the ACLU of Utah
has been party to or initiated 11 lawsuits. But all of those legal actions were
filed and fought between 2000 and 2005. Since 2005, the local ACLU has filed
exactly zero lawsuits. That lack of legal action has local civil-rights
attorneys asking: Who muzzled the watchdog? In the organization’s
lawsuit-slinging days, it raised awareness through legal actions and media
coverage, but only hosted one community outreach event—a booth co-sponsored
with The King’s English Bookshop, passing out literature about the First
Amendment and censorship at the Downtown Farmers Market. Since 2005, the ACLU
of Utah has held 14 outreach events, including panel discussions, documentary
film screenings and community workshops, according to the organization’s
Website. Could it be that those who
would deprive us of our civil liberties learned their lessons from the ACLU of
Utah during 2000-05? Longtime civil-rights attorney Brian Barnard doesn’t think
so. “There
 |
| Brian Barnard |
are many, many statutes, practices and situations in Utah today of
egregious and systemic violations of civil rights which warrant—cry out—for
litigation,” Barnard writes in an e-mail. “All civil-rights attorneys in Utah
have not collectively declared victory and retired.” While the ACLU of Utah may
be muzzled as far lawsuits go, current director Karen McCreary (pictured at
left) says the organization is simply being pragmatic. “We’ve been giving our attention to what we
can do and what’s feasible to do,” says McCreary, citing significant
behind-the-scenes negotiating and correspondence in recent years with various
legislators, school districts and government agencies. The ACLU of Utah might
not be the courtroom attack dog it once was, taking on everyone from small-town
cops to the LDS Church, but the organization is still a vocal advocate. Former
ACLU of Utah cheerleaders interviewed for this story, however, wonder how the
organization can maintain credibility in the legal community without filing
more lawsuits and legal briefs. Even if it avoids epic (and costly) battles,
they say it should continue to help the little guys with their smaller, yet
still crucial, cases. A case in point is Joseph Alden Compton, a convert to the
fundamentalist Mormon sect known as the Apostolic United Brotherhood. In late
2009, the Juab County judge overseeing the divorce proceedings of Compton—who
was representing himself—and his ex-wife ruled that their children could not be
exposed to any of Compton’s religious teachings or even visit him in his
neighborhood because it was a known enclave of polygamists. His ex-wife feared
that the fundamentalists would negatively influence their children. “I actually
talked to the ACLU and, initially, they were very interested,” Compton says.
“But for some reason, they said they changed their mind and that they didn’t
want to do it.” John Pace, a Salt Lake City attorney who has worked with the
ACLU of Utah on cases, says that local civil-rights attorneys don’t feel the
organization is going to bat for clients the way it used to because of fears of
negative publicity. “If anyone should not be concerned about bad publicity, it
should be the ACLU,” Pace says. Educators and Ambulance Chasers Former ACLU of
Utah director Gnade found a lot of her strength in, ironically, not being a
lawyer. As the boss of her own public-relations firm in Madison, she extended
her vacation for several weeks in 1991 when she helped the ACLU of Utah in its
abortion-ban lawsuit. She returned to her firm in Wisconsin for less than a
year before accepting a staff position with the ACLU of Utah, which soon led to
her promotion to executive director. It was during her almost 10-year tenure
that the ACLU of Utah picked some serious fights, defending the likes of Wendy
Weaver, an American Fork High School teacher fired for admitting to a student
in a nonclassroom setting that she was gay. These were also formative years in
protecting students’ rights to form gay-straight alliances in high schools and
addressing complaints against Salt Lake City for selling a block of Main Street
to the LDS Church. Gnade operated on three simple priorities: keeping the ACLU
fiscally sound, managing an office of “rugged individualists” and “being an
ambulance chaser for civil rights.” Public relations being her forte, Gnade
developed a strong rapport with the media and constantly sought out plaintiffs.
For Gnade, a critical problem for the ACLU of Utah was the public’s lack of
understanding. Just as many bureaucrats, judges or legislators might not
understand how their actions could be unconstitutional, she found that people
didn’t realize their civil liberties were being trampled upon. “It is very hard
to get people to walk into the door, because they’re afraid,” she says. For a
nonlawyer, Gnade got the ACLU of Utah involved in many legal battles. But, she
says, that’s not the only way to effectively run the organization. “You don’t
get a job description for [executive director] that makes it easy and clear.”
Gnade does believe, however, that dealing with civil-rights abuses during her
tenure involved more stick than carrot.
“You have to decide if you want to make nice or if you want to make
headway,” she says, adding that alternative measures like letter-writing can
resolve issues but “it’s lawsuits that make headway. Since we’re one of the
only organizations that can do that, it makes a difference.” Gnade felt that
when she stepped down, the board of directors may have been ready to become an
organization that worked more from the grass roots up than the courtrooms down.
After Gnade, Dani Eyer led the ACLU of Utah for four years, and McCreary, the
current director, began in 2006. Eyer could not be reached for comment on this
story. Prior to her time at the ACLU of Utah, McCreary had worked as associate
and senior associate general counsel for the University of Utah and as counsel
for the Western Governors University. She speaks casually of a childhood living
in India and volunteering to fight for the rights of migrant workers in high
school, as if it were a typical American upbringing. She also appreciates the
value of a lean-and-mean approach to running the ACLU of Utah. “Our goal is to
be as effective and as strategically responsive in those areas as we can be,”
McCreary says. “There is a fair amount of things we do behind the scenes. We
write letters, we call people, we tell them what the law is—having said that,
we also have a legal panel, lawyers and litigationLawsuits vs. Lobbying To
litigate or not is a tricky question. While many civil-rights attorneys
subscribe to a sue-first, ask-questions-later attitude, the ACLU of Utah is
leaning toward a tack of more aggressive behind-the-scenes wrangling. The lack
of lawsuits since 2005 is not for a lack of controversial laws and practices,
most notably Senate Bill 81 in 2008. When this omnibus immigration bill was introduced
in the Legislature in 2008, it immediately instilled panic in Utah’s
undocumented and documented immigrant communities with its broad-sweeping
requests for employment verification and allowing for local law enforcement to
be cross-deputized with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement powers. When
the bill became law on July 1, 2009, however, the ACLU of Utah did not file a
lawsuit, despite similar lawsuits placed against comparable legislation in
states like Oklahoma. Instead, the ACLU of Utah initiated a number of community
forums to discuss immigration reform and the impacts of the bill. If there’s
anyone who’s pleased with that outcome, it’s Salt Lake City attorney Roger
Tsai, a veteran immigration attorney and board member of the Salt Lake Chamber
Immigration Taskforce. “The ACLU hasn’t sat around doing nothing,” Tsai says,
citing the informational guides the ACLU of Utah created in English and Spanish
to educate people about the impacts of the bill. The outreach and the forums,
Tsai says, have had more impact than a lawsuit likely ever could. “In some
ways, [outreach] is even more important than a lawsuit. I think it’s more
important to get information to the immigrant community about what [SB 81]
actually means to them,” he says. “The most detrimental part to that community
is the kind of fear and rumors it generates, rather than the actual substance
of the law.” In another instance,
outrage over discounted ballots during the 2007 Ogden mayoral race resulted not
in a lawsuit, but a new state law. In 2007, thousands of voters were shocked to
find that, when they showed up at their polling locations, their eligibility as
voters had been challenged, forcing them to cast a provisional ballot. With
hundreds more than usual provisional ballots turning up, overwhelmed election
staff had to throw out many votes because they could not confirm the
eligibility of the voters. “Unfortunately, the way the law was drafted,
somebody could submit a list to the county clerk saying, ‘I think all of these
people are ineligible to vote,’ without any factual sort of basis,” says Marina
Lowe, the legislative liaison for the ACLU of Utah and former legal director.
Pulling the trigger on a lawsuit would have required the ACLU of Utah to prove
that the discarded ballots would have changed the outcome of the election—a
time-consuming and costly effort to even get the complaint off the ground.
Instead, the ACLU of Utah spent two years working with legislators,
elections-office officials and county clerks to develop a bill passed by Sen.
Peter Knudson, R-Brigham City, during the 2010 Legislature to protect voters’
rights at the polling place. The bill requires that if a vote is to be
challenged, it has to be done before Election Day. Further, the challenger must
provide facts to back up the claim under penalty of perjury and the challenged
voter must have time to respond to the challenge. “It’s really great that the
ACLU has multiple tools to use,” Lowe says. “In this case, a lawsuit couldn’t
effect the change that we wanted.” Cost is another consideration. While the
ACLU of Utah Foundation’s most recent 990 tax filing, for 2008, shows the
organization had $643,264—slightly more net assets than 2007—recent changes in
national funding have put chapters on notice all across the country. In 2009,
The New York Times reported that the national ACLU had lost its largest donor,
David Gelbaum, who annually donated more than $20 million to the organization,
often making up as much as 25 percent of the organization’s budget. According
to ACLU of Utah’s newsletter for January 2010, The ACLU Reporter, it was
unclear what the budgetary trickle-down effect would be for state offices, but
“the ACLU is engaged in belt-tightening at every level of the organization. The
ACLU of Utah benefits greatly from the national ACLU office.” Robert Wood, the current ACLU of Utah board
president, actually sees the budget as a nonissue. “The year we just ended, we
had a surplus,” he says. “People have really stepped up, and we haven’t had to
cut back [operations].” Wood also doesn’t see the lack of lawsuits as
representative of a lack of advocacy. “We’ve had a streak for a while where
just the threat of litigation brought out pretty good results for us,” Wood
says. “We just say, ‘You keep doing this, and we’ll have to sue you,’ and they
say, ‘Yeah, we’ll stop doing it.’ ”Use It or Lose It For an organization that’s
taken on almost every power player in the state—from the prisons to the
Legislature to the LDS Church—the ACLU of Utah has rarely employed more than a handful
of staff. Currently, the organization has recruited a new legal director from
the New York State Attorney General’s Office, Darcy Goddard, to assist Lowe and
McCreary. But as for actual litigation, the office has always relied on
attorneys in the local legal community to help fight their battles. Without
taking any issues to the courts in years, however, some attorneys who have
previously worked closely with the ACLU of Utah are beginning to lose faith.
For Gnade, one of the most critical dynamics to the success of the ACLU of Utah
was having a bevy of private-practice attorneys who had the passion but not the
resources of the ACLU of Utah. “Individual attorneys don’t have the time for
these kinds of suits to [work] on their own,” she says. “So, they need an
organization to partner with.” Attorney Barnard has been a
proud foot soldier for the ACLU of Utah, working as a cooperating attorney for
decades. While he sees the hiring of experienced litigator Goddard as a
positive, he’s also saddened by the organization’s recent track record. “I am
dismayed that the Utah ACLU has not filed a lawsuit in almost five years.
Clearly, that is not because civil-rights violations no longer occur in Utah,”
Barnard writes via e-mail. “I can give you a list of five substantial, systemic
problems in the Davis and Salt Lake County jails and at the Utah State Prison
that warranted lawsuits in that time period. Quiet public education behind the
scenes is not the primary mission of the ACLU. Bureaucrats ignore letters from
the ACLU; they cannot ignore lawsuits.” While Barnard has a working
relationship with the organization, even those further away share his views.
Unaffiliated civil-rights attorney Randall Edwards, see an organization losing
credibility in the local legal community. “Word on the street is that the ACLU
of Utah has become toothless when it comes to actually litigating anything
here, which would seem to fly in the face of the original mission of the
organization,” Edwards writes via e-mail. The result he sees is an organization
not taken seriously, and one that leaves many egregious civil-liberties
violations left unchallenged when the client can’t afford to go to a private
attorney in the first place. “They can speak at seminars all they want, but who
cares, [if] they won’t back it up with actual lawsuits?” Edwards writes. Joseph
Compton approached the ACLU of Utah with just such a predicament after the
ruling in Juab that made his religious beliefs legal fodder. Although the ACLU
of Utah had an initial meeting with him, they eventually backed away from the
case. A court transcript of an Aug. 25, 2009, hearing provides some detail of
Compton’s fight for visitation and custody rights for his and his ex-wife’s
eight children. “There’s nothing to show that teaching children the importance
of celestial plural marriage is damaging: the [LDS] Church teaches it also,”
Compton testified, before being cut off by 4th District Judge Donald Eyre, who
interjected that children should have consistency in their religious
upbringing. “Clearly, your wife, at least through her expression in her
complaint, desires that she continue, and the children continue, a certain
religious, you know, background. And clearly, that’s within her rights,” Eyre
said in the hearing. (Eyre did not comment for this story.) Compton relented
and informed the court he’d be happy to take his children to any local LDS ward
they wanted, noting that he still was a member of the LDS Church. Eyre ordered
that during visitation that the tenets of his fundamentalist belief not be
expressed to his children in or outside of his presence. Compton was also
ordered to visit his children only outside of the neighborhood. Eyre was
persuaded by the argument made in court by the attorney for Compton’s wife, David
Leavitt, that the neighborhood was a “known haven for polygamy” and the
children should not be allowed into a place where people are wantonly
committing felonies. “I think it’s well established that in the best interest
of the children, the law can [keep] them away from drug houses and all kinds of
criminal activity, and, for decades, bigamy has been a felony,” Leavitt says in
an interview with City Weekly. While the ACLU’s Lowe admits that their legal
panel gave the green light to Compton’s case for further inquiry or potential
litigation, she says the executive staff decided against it. “We looked at it
and were hoping we could help him, but for various reasons we were unable to,”
Lowe says. Compton has since retained a lawyer, Daniel Irvin, who recently
filed an objection to the judge’s temporary order, which has been in effect
since August 2007. He maintains that while bigamy is a crime, believing in
polygamy without practicing it is not a crime. Irvin worries that bias in the
courtroom adversely affected his client. He says had the ACLU of Utah filed a
lawsuit and only took it as far as an initial complaint, at the very least, it
could have forced the judge to recuse himself from the case, which would be a
“blessing” for Compton. Irvin, who actually interned with the ACLU of Utah in
the early 2000s, was surprised the ACLU didn’t get involved. “I thought they
were there to protect our Bill of Rights? This [case] screams ‘Bill of Rights!’
We think you have a right to associate with whoever you want and teach
religious principles in your home,” Irvin says. Old Dog, Old Tricks As a
watchdog, the ACLU of Utah has gone through some changes. At the beginning of
the decade, the ACLU of Utah was like a junkyard dog that wouldn’t hesitate to
bite down with a lawsuit on city government and the LDS Church. It would even
growl at businesses that offered consumer discounts to returned LDS
missionaries. Now, as a legislative lobbyist and public educator, the
Lassie-like version of the old watchdog is friendlier, easier to pet, but still
vigilant of any threat to the Bill of Rights, barking loudly to alert the
powers that be when Timmy’s civil liberties have fallen down a well. Still, it
will take some convincing for some attorneys who remember the ACLU of Utah’s
lawsuit-filing glory days to adjust to the softer strategy, especially when
they avoid courtroom battles like Compton’s. “The ACLU [of Utah] used to be
notorious for jumping into [legal battles] in order to change policy through
the court system,” attorney Edwards (pictured at left) writes, “since the
political system here is ... uh ... somewhat unfriendly to minorities, women,
old people, gays, Democrats, heathens, drinkers, long-hairs, street people ...
you get the picture. The ACLU is neither a resource of first resort nor even
last resort.” The jury is not out, however. Some, like Tsai, who have seen the
importance of the ACLU of Utah’s grass-roots efforts with helping calm the
fears of Utah’s immigrant population, disagree. “The question is if people want
to see more lawsuits,” Tsai asks. “Are they willing to consider significantly
increasing donations to the ACLU to actually see those lawsuits happen?” But
the old bite may not be completely gone. The ACLU of Utah, partnered with the
University of Utah’s Civil Rights Legal Clinic, has been surveying the quality
of indigent defense provided for impoverished defendants in Utah’s legal
system. With a new legal director who possesses serious litigating credentials,
people like Barnard are cautiously optimistic about the ACLU of Utah reforming
Utah’s support for poor defendants, which often is ranked among the worst in
the nation. With that issue and others, the small but scrappy staff of the ACLU
aren’t taking anything off the table when it comes to the good fight.
“Sometimes it takes [legal action], sometimes it’s public education, sometimes
it’s legislative—it takes all those things,” McCreary says. “Because the
potential of the government to abuse its power or to have the rights of
minorities trampled on—it’s kind of human—so we have to keep working with all
the tools we have.” “There may be some things we don’t have a choice [but to
litigate], in the near future,” says Goddard, chiming in. “Yeah, so stay
tuned,” McCreary says.
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