So Salt Lake City is stepping out, urging a new anti-discrimination law that actually includes sexual orientation and gender identity in the traditional list of those affected by housing and employment discrimination.
Take that, all you legislators who have squashed any such thinking on the state level, arguing disingenuously that "choosing to be gay" is not grounds for civil rights protection. Mayor Ralph Becker, a Democratic representative for 11 years, knows all about that ruse.
And one of the most fascinating things is how the city's Human Rights Commission got there: Its members sat down and talked to people in five "dialogues on discrimination" late last year. No lectures, no surveys. Just conversations about classism/poverty, people with disabilities, racism, faith and sexual orientation.
Kilo Zamora, whose nonprofit Inclusion Center trained the commissioners, says the opener was, "How's the city doing, and do you think there's discrimination here?"
As people talked, it became evident that race, gender, class, income and religious biases "we thought we had buried in the '60s were much alive in our communities," he says.
People were shocked. "Are you sure?" they would ask. "I never knew racism was still alive!"
Debra Daniels, director of the Women's Center at the University of Utah, has only to tell her story. On Tuesday, she described growing up black in Ogden, suffering racial slurs, humiliation, being chased away from a friend's yard. Today, as a gay woman in a 20-year relationship and a mom to two children, she says the city's initiative is the right thing.
Still, there is much to do. Every human being has a story, she says, and each gets to tell what their reality has been. The key is to listen. "It's hard to hate someone you know," she says.
Data show Salt Lake City is 32.7 percent ethnically diverse, up 17 percent over seven years.
That's cause for celebration, since a lot of us have long had the sense that Salt Lake remains much like the rest of the state: largely white, straight, Mormon and conservative.
On the other hand, it makes me think about my old attitude toward Latter-day Saints, whose forbears once were the "others."
Distrust works both ways. Did I make cursory judgments based on color and religion? Yes, and usually they were wrong. It wasn't until I learned everyone has a story, a history, heartbreak and grace, that I realized I was guilty of what I once accused the majority of: a self-congratulatory sense of being on the right side of things.
As the greater conversation the Human Rights Commission unfolds, I'll remember what Daniels also said: "We take this movement in steps, and this is a huge step."
