So it is not surprising that in many of the hundreds of letters to this newspaper about state Sen. Chris Buttars and his appalling public utterances, the two words - bigotry and ignorance, or their derivatives - are used virtually interchangeably. And perhaps the writers are right. For in Buttars' case, if there is a distinction to be made, it is a distinction without a discernible difference.

On Feb. 12, during floor debate, a bill was labeled by some senators as an "ugly baby." Then Buttars said, "This baby is black, I'll tell you. This is a dark, ugly thing."

Later, after prompting by Senate President John Valentine - who himself had to be prompted by Democratic Sen. Ross Romero - Buttars said, "I apologize to anyone who took offense" and he asked their forgiveness. "I made a comment that I think a lot of people could take racist. I certainly did not mean that in any way but it was wrong and certainly could easily have been taken that way."

Valentine certainly didn't take it that way. For him, "it was inappropriate and a breach of decorum." Case closed.

Thousands of people in Utah and elsewhere, none of them Utah Senate Republicans, read and heard Buttars' words with eyes and ears attuned to their plain meaning in 21st century American culture: A black baby is a dark and ugly thing.

Sheer bigotry or stupefying ignorance? For most Americans with even a modicum of racial sensitivity, the answer is obvious. Buttars is a bigot. But for many Utahns, who repeatedly have watched Buttars turn his deep homophobia into discriminatory legislation that his Republican colleagues have obligingly passed into law, the answer seems less clear. Yes, he embarrasses Utah. Yes, he may be insensitive, even ignorant. But a bigot?

On Monday, Buttars cast himself as a misunderstood victim. A few days of criticism? Fine, he understood that. "But then they started getting meaner and meaner and meaner to the point it is just a hate lynch mob."

Lynch mob? These people who are quite naturally upset by a racially charged statement about black babies? Babies that descend from slaves who, after gaining their freedom, were lynched by mobs, many thousands over many decades, because they, too, were once black babies?

Once again, bigotry or ignorance? We see no distinction here. Buttars himself has made the question moot.