This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Well, now we know that tea party Utah is a diverse group, standing up for all those who have been oppressed by tyrannical governments.

They embrace the cause of suppressed American Indians, even though many of the tea-party ilk have had no problem in the past looting or destroying sacred American Indian artifacts.

They relate to the residents of India enslaved by the British government, and to those similarly treated in China, as well as the African-Americans living in the Jim Crow South.

Their affinity for all those oppressed groups is clear now, since the southern Utah supporters of convicted trespasser Phil Lyman are selling T-shirts with images of iconic civil-rights champions Rosa Parks, Chief Joseph, Mahatma Gandhi, the "tank man" from the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing and their very own Phil Lyman.

The T-shirt sale is to raise a defense fund for Lyman after he was convicted of misdemeanor conspiracy charges for organizing a motorized-vehicle ride in a protected canyon off-limits to motorized vehicles.

The supporters selling the shirts have put Lyman in this exclusive circle of heroes because he apparently is fighting for folks who have been similarly oppressed by their government.

And we all know the folks in southern Utah have suffered just as greatly as the 19th century American Indians slaughtered and displaced by U.S. soldiers, the Indians and Chinese oppressed by their governments and the blacks who routinely were lynched in the South.

That's because there are certain areas where they can't ride their ATVs.

Another example of tea-party diversity is what's happening in Utah County.

The tea partiers traditionally get apoplectic over restrictions placed on access to federally controlled land. Their cause, for which Lyman is now being called a martyr, has been to force the feds to turn over public lands to the state and for some of the land to be sold to private interests.

But the tea party, led by anti-federal-oppression Utah County Commissioner Bill Lee, is protesting a proposed land swap between Snowbird Ski Resort and the U.S. Forest Service. Snowbird would trade 1,400 acres it owns in Salt Lake County's Little Cottonwood Canyon for 416 acres in Utah County's American Fork Canyon.

The protesters currently can ride their motorized vehicles on the Forest Service land in American Fork Canyon and they fear that if it becomes privately owned by Snowbird, there might be restrictions.

So sometimes, they clamor for the feds to cede control to the state and private interests, and sometimes they want the feds to keep the land out of the hands of private interests, depending on what they personally want.

Now that's diversity.

Former Salt Lake City Mayor and environmental activist Ted Wilson once noticed that trend when environmentalist hater Mike Noel, the Republican state representative from Kanab, once asked him if he had the guts to meet with the anti-fed Cowboy Caucus at the Utah Capitol.

As Wilson walked into the room and faced icy glares from the "cowboys," he told them he had just seen the film "Brokeback Mountain" and wanted to compliment them for the diversity that had come to the range.

He said he hoped now they could accept environmentalists as well.

At least Noel laughed. —