Word: mormons
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...original Mormon pioneers came to Utah under duress--their founder, Joseph Smith, was murdered in Illinois in 1844, and his followers fled westward to escape persecution. Modern-day non-Mormon settlers will come only because they want to, and the state's leaders know that. So, as if by rote, they recite the advantages of living in Utah: low crime, great mountains, those five national parks, a tech-savvy population with the nation's highest per capita ownership of computers, and 45-min. access to world-class ski resorts from the center of Salt Lake. Yet the image of Paradise...
...there will be 1,305 places to buy a drink "within the confines of the Olympic area"--twice as many places as in the two previous Winter Olympics venues of Lillehammer and Nagano combined, he says. And the clean, crime-free, wholesome society envisioned by the founders of the Mormon church produces spike-haired, nihilistic punks (depicted in the movie SLC Punk!), black-clad goths and the highest rate of Prozac consumption in the country. Despite the strong antipathy of the Mormon church to homosexuality, Salt Lake City has an internationally known lesbian underground scene...
...prominent member of the local gay community, says the gay scene has become so visible "partly out of need. The community here can be so oppressive, it almost creates the need for a thriving gay and lesbian community." Outsiders visiting Utah are frequently shocked by the degree of anti-Mormon sentiment that is expressed in conversation by non-Mormons, often quite openly. "People say things about Mormons that they wouldn't dream of saying about blacks or Hispanics or Jews or whatever," says Zimmerman...
...speech on "Why I want to be a black transsexual." It was an act of defiance. Goldsmith, who is Jewish, remembers being roughed up almost every week on the way home from school in Salt Lake City when his classmates would turn off to go to the nearby Mormon church and he would continue on straight to go home. Goldsmith, now 47, is the city planner for Salt Lake City, hired by the controversial new mayor, Rocky Anderson, to revitalize the downtown area, block strip-mall developments and open up bike trails and green spaces in the city...
...boss, Anderson, was elected with 62% of the vote against a Mormon opponent in 1999, and Utahans have been rubbing their eyes ever since. Anderson has a yellow-naped Amazonian parrot in his office whose screeches and wolf whistles echo down the corridor of the City County building; Anderson's politics are no less jarring. Now 50 and twice divorced, he left the Mormon church at 18 over "theological issues." He was a trial lawyer for 21 years, including a stint at the American Civil Liberties Union...