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Pious Perverts See other Pious Perverts Articles Title: Conservative Salt Lake City has surprisingly high gay population Conservative Salt Lake City has surprisingly high gay population Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY - David Johnson stopped believing in the Mormon church about three years ago, when he came out of the closet after returning home from a proselytizing mission in Thailand. At 24, he now lives the life of a gay man, but it hasn't come without cost. His father, a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will have little to do with him. Predictably, Johnson moved away from his parents' home in southern Utah - but not as far as you might imagine. He chooses to live here - in the capital of one of the nation's most conservative states, and shadowed by the worldwide headquarters of a church that suffuses nearly every aspect of life in Utah. Considered one of the world's fastest growing faiths, with about 12 million members worldwide, it's also a church that won't accept homosexuals until they are rehabilitated. "It's not that I'm angry with the church. I understand that they don't understand," Johnson said. "I would rather spend my energy elsewhere on something I can actually change." During Utah's Pride Week Festival, running through Sunday, plenty of people like Johnson are gathering around Salt Lake City - a yearly reminder of just how large the gay community here has become. It culminates Sunday with a parade that organizers say is the second largest in the state, behind the annual July parade commemorating the Mormon settlement of the Salt Lake Valley. It has long been said locally that Salt Lake City had inordinately high per-capita numbers of gays, but exact figures are hard to come by. Leaders of many of the city's advocacy groups don't even venture a guess. Though the census did not ask about sexual orientation, it did tally 594,391 same-sex couples living together nationwide. Gay advocates estimate that undercounts the population by as much as 50 percent, because it only counts homosexuals in a relationship. Also, because census data is self-reported, some respondents might not acknowledge they're in a live-in homosexual relationship to protect their privacy. Census figures show Utah had 3,370 same-sex households. However, most of them are in Utah's urban regions, and that is believed to give Salt Lake City a high per-capita rating. Salt Lake City's total population is 181,266. Major cities with high levels of same-sex couples per capita include San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., Seattle, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Austin, Texas, according to The Gay and Lesbian Atlas, published last year by Urban Institute demographer Gary Gates and researcher Jason Ost using 2000 census data. The same researchers put Salt Lake City in the top 6 percent of cities where gay and lesbian couples were likely to live. "Clearly, Salt Lake City has a high concentration," Gates told The Associated Press. Smaller towns with the highest concentration of same-sex couples were Provincetown, Mass., Guerneville, Calif., Wilton Manors, Fla., West Hollywood, Calif., and Palm Springs, Calif. Instead of flocking to those cities, many gays and lesbians in Utah are former Mormons who grew up in the area and don't want to leave, despite living under a political system that just passed one of the country's most restrictive amendments banning gay marriage. Others migrated from sparsely populated and equally conservative nearby states like Idaho and Wyoming, which have no high-concentration gay areas of their own. Michael Mitchell, executive director of the advocacy group Equality Utah, said many Salt Lake gays and lesbians don't want to abandon the unique brand of Western living they grew up with. The pace of life is generally slow, and nearby mountain ranges full of powder runs and hiking trails provide abundant chances to enjoy nature while still living in an urban area. "There's this perception that gay and lesbian people are very interested in decorating their homes, trotting out to bars and drinking cosmopolitans. A lot of gay people I know are very active," he said. Other benefits like affordability and a relatively low crime rate are enough for some people to justify staying, he said. Besides, as Mitchell notes, "the next big city is Denver, eight hours one way, and Las Vegas, five hours the other way." Not all gays and lesbians in Utah were raised Mormon, but many were. For them, the decision to stay in-state, where they were taught steadfastly that homosexuality is a serious sin, can be a complicated one. In Utah, the church is as much a culture as a faith. Johnson said he's seen several people fighting that internal battle, but he's been able to negotiate his own set of beliefs. "Some of their core values I really like, but some of their extenuating guidelines and morals, they just don't work for me," he said. A Mormon church spokeswoman declined comment on Utah's Pride Week, instead referring a reporter to previous church statements on homosexuality in general. They read, in part: "We realize there may be great loneliness in their lives but there must also be recognition of what is right before the Lord." --- On the Net: GLBT Center of Utah: http://www.glccu.com/ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: http://www.lds.org
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 5.
#4. To: Mr Nuke Buzzcut (#0)
In other words, he wants to pick and choose what parts of God "he'll" accept. Got news for him.....it doesn't work that way. This idea that that following God is like a restaurant menu where you'll pick and choose what YOU want, leaving off what HE wants is a guarantee to spend eternity in that other place....
Actually, it does. If one stipulates to the existence of a "god" and then procedes to formulate a religion and dogma around said god, you've done nothing less than exactly what this man has done. Every religion (and every member of every religion) makes personal judgements about the god they believe in and how they'll submit to and worship it.
#6. To: Mr Nuke Buzzcut (#5)
He isn't living with the religion he grew up with and found so comfortable. The article suggests that 'if the mormons would just let him be queer' all would be well with him'. He, of course, is more than welcome to 'make up' his own religion, and his own concept of God.....what it will get him is something I wouldn't be interested in--at all--whether queer or straight! It is interesting to me how these people that want to lend credence to queerness extract or extrapolate all sorts of 'stuff' from census figures.....as if 595,000 being doubled suddenly gives us the 10 -- 20% queer population figures that queers want society to believe is out there just waiting to be 'like them'. Screwey...........
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