Friday, April 1, 2011

The Utah state legislature never fails to be weird

The Utah state legislature usually leaves one with plenty to be skeptical about.  On the upside, they did repeal H.B. 477, which would have limited access to government records.  On the downside, they also passed H. B. 477 in the first place.

The silliest bill passed may very well be the official state firearm being named the Browning M1911 handgun.  Since John Browning was from Utah, it does make some sort of weird sense.  Another odd bill passed was H.B. 317 which recognizes gold and silver coins issued by the federal government to be legal tender but does not compel a person to accept such coins as tender.  Reading the fine print, it sounds more like a sort of tax dodge for people who speculate in gold and silver.

It is pretty easy to just verbally beat up on the legislature, and while I plan to do plenty of that, I do want to point out at least one thing that they did do that was positive.  They did not pass H.B. 109. This bill, which is called, "Religious Liberty Recognition," is more like a feel free to discriminate against homosexuals if you can possibly construe a religious justification for said discrimination.  Well done in not passing that piece of hate legislation guys.

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