If living in Utah bothers you because it's so Mormon, take heart. The state's population is less LDS today than it has been since the arrival of the pioneers.

According to the LDS Church's own statistics, Utah's Mormon-to-whatever ratio changed three-tenths of a point during the past year. Currently, we make up a mere 60.4 percent of Zion.

At this rate, many believe Mormon control of the Legislature will cease by approximately the year never. It's something to think about if you're the impatient sort.

Truthfully, it's changing faster than we might think. My family moved here from California in 1970. Back then, the demographics of Zion were still roughly 871.9 percent LDS.

I didn't care for Utah at first, but I was young and flexible and my feelings soon changed. Within 48 hours, I hated it. I couldn't figure out why. My family was Mormon. Shouldn't Utah feel more like home?

Being LDS actually made things worse. I was accustomed to living in places where the congregation didn't follow us home from church. In short, I got a break from people who were just like me.

On Sunday, I was surrounded by other Mormons. The rest of the week, the world was anything but LDS. In fact, church rarely came up at all. There were too many other more important things to focus on -- not the least of which was just getting along.

Perhaps because of that, Utah was hard to take at first. One day I was looking around in despair and thought, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with this place that half a million Mexicans wouldn't fix."

I immediately had similar thoughts about blacks, Asians, Puerto Ricans, hippies, surf bums and every other kind of group I was used to having around me for personal contrast.

Note: I did not think of Canadians. I apologize for that. For some reason, an extra helping of reserved Caucasian just didn't come up.

You might think that being surrounded only by people who look, think and believe like you actually makes you feel safe and comfortable. It's a lie. What you're really feeling is stupid and lazy.

Without contrasting points of view being forced on us, human beings don't even have to try to broaden our views and our understanding.

But Utah is changing. If you don't think so, take a walk through the Capitol and check out the grouped photographs of the old state Legislatures hanging on the walls.

For more than 100 years, the faces were almost entirely white, male and Mormon. If any of them were gay, they kept it to themselves.

The face of Utah has changed a lot in the past 40 years. It's far more diverse. For example, we don't just excommunicate homosexuals now. We also elect them to the Legislature.

Change like this didn't happen because I moved here. It happened because you did. Keep it coming.

Robert Kirby is a columnist. Reach him at rkirby@sltrib.com.