Utah state Senator Chris Buttars seems to generate news whenever he opens him mouth because you can be sure that whatever comes out it going to be idiotic or offensive or both.
Buttars has been making news since back in 2006, when he proclaimed that the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education was "wrong to begin with” and again last year when he voiced his opposition to an education bill by saying “this baby is black…this is a dark, ugly thing." In December he was named the “Worst Person in the World” by Keith Olbermann for his effort to make sure everyone said “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.”
And I have a feeling that once this audio clip from Good As You starts to get around, Buttars will once again find himself in the running for Olbermann’s honor.
ABC 4 in Salt Lake City, which first reported the story, reports that the audio comes from an interview Buttars did with filmmaker Reed Cowan for his upcoming documentary called "8: The Mormon Proposition.” In it, Buttars compares gays to Islamic radicals, compares America to Sodom and Gomorrah, that gays have no morals and that acceptance of their lifestyle will bring about the destruction of the nation.
The entire rambling clip is over 15 minutes long, but we’ve taken the highlights and edited it down and provided this rough transcript (if the player isn't working, you can listen to the audio here):
I believe in the Constitution being something that was inspired of God and the way these people are destroying the Constitution is they’re saying the Constitution is a living document, that means it’s subject to change. But truth don’t change, it does not change, and I won’t accept any of that. So they say, well, marriage is between a man and a women and that’s changed, look around, look at all these combinations. Combinations of abominations, as far as I’m concerned. To me, homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion and you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts, but I don’t care.
They want to talk about being nice, but they’re the meanest buggers I’ve ever seen. It’s just like the Muslims. Muslims are good people and their religion is anti-war, but it’s been taken over by the radical side and the gays are totally taken over by the radical side. You don’t see the gay out there saying “let’s not do this gang.” You see them marching around with signs and everything else.
I believe the whole thing is immoral and I believe you're moving towards … you see, if you say to me “quit shoving your morals down my throat, Buttars” my answer back is “you know my morals. What’s yours?” What is the morals of a gay person? You can’t answer that, because anything goes. So now you’re moving towards a society that has no morals and there’s never been a nation that survived that’s done that.
There’s a lot of dollar costs. You take their trying to have insurance rights the same as a man and a woman. Now, when you’re married, insurance companies can quantify, we got this many married people so they run their underwriting. You have no way to do that with gay people and you’re going to take on paying for all the extra, most often, diseases, and that’s huge. And now you, as a straight, get to share that cost. That’s what I’m talking about. Those kinds of diseases are not exclusive with gays, but they represent the huge majority.
I believe that you will destroy the foundation of American society because I believe the cornerstone of it is a man and a woman and a family. It is, in my mind, the beginning of the end. Oh, it's worse than that. Sure, Sodom and Gomorrah was localized, this is world-wide. You can’t tell me that something was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah is not going on wholesale right now and to a large degree among the gay community … The underbelly is they do not want equality, they want superiority.
