There, walking down the hallway in his trademark dark blue suit, shaking every hand he could, was my senator.
"Senator Hatch, I'm Dan Webster from the Episcopal Peace Fellowship. I sent you a copy of my Sept. 24 speech because your name's in it," I said.
He said he thought he recalled it. Given the amount of communication he gets from constituents, I wondered.
But I was pleased he was willing to stop and talk. So many politicians do tend to move on to the next handshake as they look over your shoulder while you advocate your passions.
"I asked you to apologize to Mayor Rocky Anderson and myself and everyone else at the Aug. 22 rally at Pioneer Park for calling us 'nutcakes,'" I said, quoting my speech. The name-calling is not helping the national dialogue, I said, and raising the level of public discourse must start with our elected officials.
Sen. Hatch was very quick to respond, saying he would never direct such a word at "earnest and sincere" people. He claimed his comments were directed only at those who carried signs with profanity on them and those he saw who made obscene physical gestures when he drove by the park on the day the president visited Salt Lake City.
"Will you spread that word around for me?" he asked with an authenticity and genuine quality that he does have.
I agreed to share his response, this article being one way to do so. But before we parted, since he had asked me to do him a favor, I figured he might do one for me.
"The next time you see Vice President Cheney, would you please tell him that using the 'f' word in addressing a senator on the floor of the U.S. Senate is not helpful?" I asked. (In June 2004, a "chance meeting," according to The Washington Post, between the vice president and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., during a photo session at the Senate erupted into an argument. "Go f--- yourself," Mr. Cheney was quoted as saying. It was later confirmed by his office).
"Leahy deserved it," said Sen. Hatch, adding quickly he does not use that word. He went on to tell me why he felt the vice president was justified in his reaction, if not his language.
The hallway conversation was not the place to dispute Sen. Hatch's position. But if he does read my Sept. 24 speech at the City and County Building rally, he will see that my suggestions are based on raising "the level of our own public discourse" and bringing about "peace in our conversations and in our communities."
At the mayor's "Freedom Forum" Oct. 12 at the City Library Auditorium, someone asked a question I felt went unanswered: "What can we do in Salt Lake City to bring about peace?"
Stopping the name-calling in our private and public conversations is a start. If we do that, then extend that to the public arena, we will go a long way to raising the level of civility in our society. We will recover a level of respect for each other that seems to have gone missing.
"Liberal," "conservative," "right," "left," "idiot," "hippie," "traitor," "radical," and even "nutcakes" are all words we use to demean, dismiss and disregard our fellow human beings. If we can marginalize someone with a different opinion to make us feel justified in our beliefs or our actions, we can feel a sense of victory. Then we have won.
Victory for the peacemaker is finding the place where everyone is honored for their humanity, for the seed of the truth carried in each one of us.
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The Rev. Dan Webster is an Episcopal priest associated at All Saints Church in Salt Lake City and an elected member of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship's national executive council.
