A majority of House members thought the bill, sponsored by Rep. Aaron Tilton, R-Springville, imposed onerous requirements to create a club and unnecessarily stepped on the authority of school districts.

The bill in its amended form still requires parents to sign a consent form before their child could join a club, but little else.

"They gutted the bill," fumed Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, who for two years has led the charge to eliminate "gay-straight alliances."

The bill now goes to the Senate, where Buttars promised to try to restore the dropped language.

He criticized Rep. Scott Wyatt, R-Logan, who pushed a substitute bill that won House support.

"He has a hidden agenda," Buttars said. "My agenda is straight and clear. I don't like gay clubs."

The "agenda" Buttars alleges is a college friend of Wyatt's who is gay and who has lobbied Tilton, the House sponsor.

Wyatt denied that his friend's position had anything to do with his efforts to temper the bill.

"My agenda is simple," he said. "We cannot come down here and take away the school districts' jobs."

Wyatt rallied against three provisions that placed "a bureaucratic stamp" on clubs - one requiring students to create bylaws and present a schedule of events annually, one mandating that students give principals hand-outs a week ahead of time so parents can review them and one restricting which adults can attend meetings.

He and other opponents of Tilton's original bill complained that 16 pages of restrictions on something as benign as school clubs went too far.

Wyatt never mentioned the section of the bill that would require the state to pay for any lawsuits stemming from the acceptance or rejection of a club, or the expanded definition of "human sexuality" - provisions Buttars hoped would allow districts to stamp out gay-straight alliances.

But his substitute bill struck that language as well.

The move came as a surprise to Rep. Jackie BiskupÂski, D-Salt Lake City, an openly gay lawmaker who had negotiated with Tilton to soften the bill's effect.

House members rejected that version.

Biskupski favors Wyatt's substitute bill more than any other, but she still doesn't like the parental-consent requirement.

"A lot of our students have absent parents, and they probably need the clubs more than most," she said.

Under the proposal pushed by Wyatt, all clubs must have a name that clearly indicates its purpose, the club can't deviate from that purpose and each student must have a signed parental-consent form to participate.

Gay-straight alliances were only mentioned once on the House floor, and that was after lawmakers gutted the bill. Tilton complained the vote struck provisions allowing students to appeal the decisions of administrators, which he described as a protection for the gay-support clubs.

Dejected after the vote that eliminated most of his proposal, Tilton said: "We essentially have what we had before."

mcanham@sltrib.com

HB236

Would require parental consent for student club participation

Next step: Goes to Senate committee