Beating the Bans
Like so many laws from the Thought Police—our Republican overlords—banning books is bound to backfire. Why is that, you ask? It's because of "choice," the term they disdain on one hand to deny women a right to their own bodies but love on the other hand if it empowers parents, ostensibly, to save their children from smut. Sunday's Salt Lake Tribune looked at lists of banned books from 17 of the state's 41 school districts. It's enough to make your eyes glaze over and never read again, which may be Utah Parents United's goal. They have a two-hour training video on how to push their anti-education agenda and are behind many of the state's book bans. Will it work? Beside the many bookstores hosting Banned Books events, parents are choosing to find those books for their kids. Women, too, are finding ways—some dangerous—to abort despite the laws. It just shows that in America, where there is a ban, there's a way around it.
Home Runs
If nothing else, this year's Salt Lake mayoral race has shed light on two intractable problems: homelessness and the lack of affordable housing. Former Mayor Rocky Anderson has made homelessness his No. 1 campaign issue and has brought the present administration to the table, arguing solutions and strategies. The National Alliance to End Homelessness maintains that the solution is simple—housing. Given developers' influence in the state, that may not be so simple. In the meantime, cities like St. George have been adopting laws to criminalize illegal "camping." Salt Lake City has seen pushback to that course, as the tension between health and humanitarian concerns escalates. With the focus on human needs, Salt Lake may be taking a new direction and one that could succeed.
Running out of Time
The Tribune's Gordon Monson wrote a sad little commentary about the future of the Salt Lake Valley—there may not be one. "Is it time to get out of Dodge? And by Dodge, we mean Salt Lake City and its surrounding communities," Monson asks. That's because the Great Salt Lake is shrinking and the powers-that-be (meaning the Legislature and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) aren't doing near enough to save us from disaster because "as it shrinks, it might just kill us all," Monson says. And there's no dearth of reports about the health hazards of fossil fuels and water consumption. He posits about "reverse pioneers" going back to Missouri, but who knew—the church has been selling off acres there, not building for the Second Coming. Monson gets that you can't trust Mother Nature to fix things in the valley, but someone needs to gird their loins and do something—like legislate. Or, at least, insist bitterly.
