The only woman on the Kanab City Council told her four colleagues and mayor at the council meeting that she made a mistake when she voted to adopt a natural family resolution on Jan. 10.

But the council let the measure stand, ignoring calls by some residents of the city to rescind the resolution.

Many are afraid the nonbinding resolution would stigmatize the community as intolerant and discourage business and visitors to the area in southern Utah.

The resolution, containing provisions like only marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God, drove a divisive wedge into the southern Utah community of about 4,000 residents.

The document, written by the conservative Sutherland Institute in Salt Lake City, also encourages family-based homes to be filled with "quivers of children," and envisions a home built on marriage as the source of "true political sovereignty and ordered liberty," operating in a bucolic landscape of "family homes, lawns, and gardens busy with useful tasks and ringing with the laughter of many children."

Sullivan said she was unable to produce a natural family as described in the resolution document and suffered discrimination, often feeling like "a square peg in a round hole."

She said government shouldn't involve itself in private affairs of residents.

"I cannot support it [resolution]," she said to thunderous applause from those at the meeting, most of whom opposed the resolution.

The other council members - Terril Honey, Anthony Chatterly, Steve Mower, Jim Sorenson - defended their vote to adopt the resolution, and none would second Sullivan's motion to take a new vote on the measure.

"The motion is defeated," said Mayor Kim Lawson.

Disappointed by the council's action was Kathleen Brockman, who drove from Rock Springs, Wyo., on Tuesday to try to prevent a repeat of what happened to Matthew Shepard.

The gay student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie was tortured to death during a hate crime in 1998.

Brockman is worried the message contained in the resolution condones discrimination against gays and others who do not fit the natural family mold.

"In Wyoming we are known as the state that killed Matthew Shepard," she said.

"[Kanab] is starting down the same path. This is the first step."