This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
KANAB - Sure, the natural-family resolution has brought its share of negatives - some community divisiveness, a few embarrassing headlines, even a tourist-sapping boycott - to this southern Utah city. But it also has prompted a positive: more civic involvement.
Since the controversy erupted in January, more residents are attending Kanab City Council meetings every other Tuesday, community meetings are drawing large crowds, and business owners are banding together to fight the fallout from the resolution.
That's a good thing, says Councilwoman Carol Sullivan, who originally voted for the hot-button resolution but later led an unsuccessful effort to rescind it.
In that spirit of heightened civic engagement, some Kanab residents - part of a new group called Take Our Community Back - are staging a lecture tonight that could be dubbed City Government 101. It will school residents about the ins and outs of municipal matters.
"Recent events have shown that our system of representative local government here is broken," said organizer Cathy McCrystal, who has lived in Kanab for eight years. "Before we can fix the breaks, we have to understand what truly functional local governments are supposed to do."
McCrystal, who opposes the natural-family resolution, hopes tonight's tutorial and future forums will lead to better educated residents, who then can become more involved.
She fears the current council tries to dodge public input and brings a religious bias to its decision-making.
"If they [council members] are concerned more with religious precepts than filling potholes," McCrystal warned, "then you're going to have a theocracy and not a democracy."
Pat Keehley, an assistant professor of political science at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, will deliver tonight's lecture. Keehley plans to discuss the pains the Founding Fathers took to avoid micromanaging state and municipal governments.
"They wanted communities to be autonomous and free to pass whatever they wanted to as long as they obeyed the Constitution," she said.
Keehley also intends to stress the importance of pushing government reform through the pull of grass-roots involvement.
Such participation would delight Sullivan.
"It's important to understand the process of what [public officials] can and cannot do," the councilwoman said. "In the long run, the more active people are, the better the community will be."
Natural-family resolution background
* On Jan. 10, the Kanab City Council adopted a nonbinding natural-family resolution - inspired by the conservative Sutherland Institute - which touts marriage between men and women as "ordained of God" and conceives homes as "open to a full quiver of children."
* It also promotes young women becoming "wives, homemakers and mothers" and young men growing into "husbands, home builders and fathers."
* Since then, women's advocates, gay-rights activists and others - inside and outside of Kanab - have criticized the resolution. Famed travel writer Arthur Frommer called for a boycott of area businesses.
Resolution-related community events
* KUER will broadcast its "RadioWest" program live this morning from Kanab High School. The program, hosted by Doug Fabrizio and focusing on the natural-family resolution, will air from 11 a.m. to noon and be repeated from 7 to 8 p.m. at 90.1 FM.
* Tonight's Take Our Community Back lecture is at 7 p.m. at the Kanab City Library, 374 N. Main St. It features Pat Keehley, an assistant professor of political science at Southern Utah University.