Chris Buttars, the Utah Republican state senator famous for racist and anti-gay outbursts, was removed from his post as head of the Judiciary Committee for breaking a deal with his anti-gay Republican colleagues to cool the rhetoric.

Buttars’ latest outburst was to a documentary filmmaker. He called same-sex relations “an abomination” and the LGBT movement “probably the greatest threat to America,” while comparing LGBT activists to Muslim “radicals.”

“Most of what Senator Buttars said, I agree with,” said Republican Senator Howard Stephenson, but his caucus felt Buttars had become too much of a “lightning rod” on LGBT issues.

A Salt Lake Tribune editorial called him a “Buttaraurus,” writing, “Buttars will never change. But Utah will.”

A “Buttars-Palooza” with live music and a DJ was organized by LGBT activists for the lawn of the state capitol on February 28 and attracted more than 1,000 people celebrating the GOP senator being taken down a peg. See Anti-Gay Senator Out; LGBT Festival Celebrates Gay City News

Controversial Sen. Chris Buttars was stripped of his Senate committee posts not because he went on an anti-gay tirade in an interview with a documentary filmmaker but because the West Jordan Republican broke a deal with Senate leaders not to talk about gay issues.

That’s what a Senate colleague revealed on a conservative radio program Saturday.

“I have to tell you publicly that most of what Sen. Buttars said — I agree with,” Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said on the weekly radio program “Inside Utah Politics” on KTKK-AM. “However, my concern is that we, as a Senate caucus, had an agreement that because Senator Buttars has become such a lightning rod on this issue, that he would not be the spokesperson on the issue.”

Buttars violated that agreement, Stephenson said, adding that the comments undermined “everything we’ve done” in the last three weeks of the legislative session. MORE

A defiant Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, said Friday he won’t let his ouster from two key legislative committee chairmanships stop him from defending marriage against “an increasingly vocal and radical segment of the homosexual community.”

Earlier Friday, Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, took the unusual step of publicly announcing he was removing Buttars as both chairman and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee

The decision also strips Buttars of his chairmanship of the Senate Judicial Confirmation Committee. Buttars, re-elected last year to a third term, remains chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee and vice-chairman of the powerful Rules Committee.

Waddoups said his action should not be seen as a punishment for anti-gay statements Buttars made to a documentary filmmaker, which include comparing gay-rights activists to Muslim terrorists and calling them “the greatest threat to America going down.”

The Senate leader said Buttars is considered by his colleagues to be a “stalwart” who “represents the views of many of his constituents and many of ours.” Waddoups acknowledged he did not agree with everything Buttars said, but he repeatedly declined to be specific.

 See Utah lawmaker who made anti-gay comments removed as committees’ chairman
The Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

UT at the Movies/Winston-Salem presents the documentary, A Jihad for Love, 7 p.m. Saturday at the ACE Theatre Complex on the UNC School of the Arts campus.

Muslim gay filmmaker, Parvez Sharma, brings to light the hidden lives of gay and lesbian Muslims from such countries as Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, France, India and South Africa.

Admission is $5, and all proceeds will benefit the Adam Foundation and UNCSA’s School of Filmmaking.

For more information, call 336-918-0902, or e-mail OUTattheMovies@triad.rr.com.

 See Muslim gay filmmaker’s work to be shown at the arts school
Winston-Salem Journal, NC 

Who could have foreseen what would happen between the Mormon filmmaker and the lesbian priest?

Not Douglas Hunter, even after he took a leap of faith and trained his camera on the Rev. Susan Russell.

And maybe not even Russell, who had undergone a remarkable transformation from one-time suburban soccer mom to priest and outspoken champion of gay rights.

But the friendship that took root when Hunter asked Russell to play the central role in his documentary about same-sex marriage and theology would lead two people from different worlds to a new understanding of themselves and their faiths.

“We’re all telling the same stories about God’s work in our lives,” said Hunter, 40, a father of three from Pasadena who discovered Russell on the Internet.

Technology may have provided the bridge, but it was an ancient religious calling that drew Hunter to Russell, a senior associate priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.

Hunter felt a religious obligation to cross the same boundary Jesus is said to have traversed 2,000 years ago when he spoke of embracing the outsider.

No group was further outside Mormon circles, Hunter thought, than gays and lesbians. Mormonism, he knew, viewed homosexual acts as sins, and Mormons would become among the most generous supporters of California’s Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage that was approved by voters last fall.

 See Faith forms a bond for a lesbian priest and a Mormon father of three
Los Angeles Times – CA,USA

By Michael Shermer

I just watched the HBO documentary film, “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” produced by Alexandra Pelosi (which the media seem curiously intent on identifying not as a filmmaker but as the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House). The film is a follow-up to her 2007 film “Friends of God,” in which Haggard was prominently featured just before his downfall from revelations that he had homosexual relations with a male prostitute, with whom he also did methamphetamine. And all this happened right in the middle of the political debate about gay marriage, in which Haggard condemned homosexuality as an abomination and gay marriage as a sin that should never be legalized.

Now, I enjoy roasting a hypocrite as much as the next person, and I sat down to watch Pelosi’s film sharpening my typing fingers in preparation for slicing this evangelical hypocrite to pieces, especially after just watching him on Larry King Live, in which he failed to apologize to gays for condemning the very “lifestyle choice” he also presumably made. (In his Christian worldview homosexuality is a choice–a bad choice, a sinful choice, but a choice nonetheless). But I came away feeling some compassion for Ted Haggard, sympathy for the devil as it were. I don’t know if Pelosi intended her film to have this effect–I suspect not from her off-camera comments in the film as she follows the fallen preacher around Phoenix selling insurance door-to-door and bumming rooms off friends at which his family can live. But given what we know about the power of belief, and the fact that this man devoted his entire life and essence to being an Evangelical Christian and all that stands for–which is a lot when you are the titular head of the 30 million-strong National Association of Evangelicals–what a striking conflict his life has been (and by all accounts still is).

By now, most of us know that homosexuality is not a “choice,” any more than heterosexuality is a choice. Asking a gay person “When did you choose to become gay?” makes about as much sense as asking a straight person “When did you choose to become straight?” The answer is the same: “Uh? I didn’t choose. I’ve always felt this way.” Right, and all the evidence from biology, psychology, and behavior genetics (twin studies) points to the fact that most people are born straight, some people are born gay, and some are even born bisexual, and that’s just the way it is. In a large population (and six billion members of a large mammalian species certainly counts) with considerable variation in most characteristics, it is inevitable that even something as seemingly straightforward (if you’ll pardon the pun) as sexuality will likely show variations on that central theme.

 See sympathy for the Devil, Compassion for Ted Haggard
Huffington Post, NY -

Democracy at the street level makes for great theater. Shipyard workers in Gdansk, the newly enfranchised in Selma or the newly liberated in Baghdad – “people power” is electrifying to behold.

“Milk,” the long, long-awaited bio-film of gay politician and “community organizer” Harvey Milk, is filled with such political thrills. It’s about a man who pioneered the cause, was elected to office as an openly gay man and who was martyred, just as he always predicted.

This history, brought vividly to life by filmmaker Gus Van Sant and a great cast headed by Sean Penn, debuts as a “community organizer” has won the presidency and the country wrestles again with gay rights.

“Milk” doesn’t waste a moment in telling Harvey’s story. From the opening credits, a montage of vintage TV and newsreel footage of police raids on gay bars in the ’60s, it gives us context, personalities, the stakes in the struggle and one who saw the big picture. See ‘Milk’ shows high stakes of gay rights movement
The Southern, IL