On Thursday
night, Derek Jones (right) and boyfriend Matt Aune claim they were simply holding
hands, walking through the LDS Church’s easement between North and South Temple
on Main Street, when they inadvertently became a target for LDS Church security
officers. For their public display of affection on church property, the couple
say they were detained by officers and even handcuffed. Jones was forced to the
asphalt.
Following
the Thursday Twilight concert, Jones, an advertising account manager for City Weekly, says he and his boyfriend
thought they were alone on the plaza as they walked to their home to Capitol
Hill around 11 p.m. It was a walk they’d taken on many occasions. The couple
paused for a moment, Aune put his arm around Jones and gave him a kiss on the
cheek. At that moment, Jones says, a number of security guards descended upon
them.
“They said
they wanted us to leave because of the public display of affection, and that
they do not allow any sort of public displays of affection on the easement
whatsoever,” Jones says.
Representatives
of the LDS Church would not return calls to comment on this story.
Aune said
that once officers detained them, he challenged them to find out what they were
doing that was actually wrong. “I was trying to get the real reason out of
them, which obviously was they were targeting us because we were a gay couple,"
Aune says.
“At no time
did we ever refuse to leave,” Aune says. “After we were in handcuffs, they
said, ‘You can leave, or we can call the police.’” Officers of the Salt Lake
City Police Department arrived and issued the pair misdemeanor citations for
trespassing. SLCPD spokeswoman Robin Snyder could not comment to specific
details of the incident but did say that on private property, individuals who
are said to be refusing to leave are subject to trespassing violations.
Karen
McCreary, executive director of the ACLU of Utah, was not familiar with the
incident. She notes that the Main Street Plaza has been private property since
2003 when the Salt Lake City Council relinquished public easements over the
property in exchange for LDS Church-owned property on Salt Lake City’s west
side and money to build the Sorenson Unity Center at 1383 S. 900 West.
The 2003
city-church land swap, and the ACLU lawsuit that followed, were the final act
in an eight-year battle over the plaza. When the city initially sold a portion
of Main Street to the LDS Church in 1999, the sale came with four public
easements, including an easement for the public to use the plaza as a through
street between South Temple and North Temple. But the public easement came with
all sorts of behavior rules (forbidding things such as swearing) and the
subsequent arrest of a Christian preacher on the plaza began the first of two
lawsuits that would take the plaza issue to federal court.
The ACLU
sued Salt Lake City, arguing that the plaza conduct restrictions were
unconstitutional.
In 2002,
the federal 10th Circuit Court agreed with the ACLU. But one line in the
court’s ruling said the city could get around the problem by getting rid of the
easements. That’s what the City Council did in 2003. The ACLU sued again,
arguing that the city couldn’t sell the public’s rights. The ACLU likened the
city-church deal to Southern cities deeding public parks to private groups in
an effort to avoid desegregation. But the 10th Circuit Court upheld the
city-church deal, which allowed the creation of the private plaza that only
looks like a public space.
"This
is what [the LDS Church] claimed in 2003 would never happen,” Aune says. “When
the controversy over the easement was high, they said it was a paperwork issue.
It wasn't. We knew it back then. They want to filter activity through that
plaza."