Gay-straight clubs under fire
Lawmaker pushes ban on school alliances, vows: 'I will prevail'
By Glen Warchol
The Salt Lake Tribune

Sara Hardcastle, the president of Hillcrest High School's Gay Straight Alliance club, says people like Utah Sen. Chris Buttars scare her.
Buttars, a West Jordan Republican, is vowing to push a bill through the upcoming Legislature to outlaw gay-straight clubs in Utah high schools. "I will prevail," he says.
"We are being targeted again," says Hardcastle, a senior who has been in the Midvale high school club - known as GSA - for more than two years.
"We are always having a finger pointed at us for doing something wrong - and it's just the opposite. We're doing something right."
By the way, the "we" to which Hardcastle refers is GSA's majority of straight members that includes her.
After five years of controversy and lawsuits over gay-straight clubs at East High School, the Salt Lake School Board settled further legal entanglements in 2000 by allowing students to form extracurricular clubs focused on homosexual issues.
But Buttars says the clubs, which exist in 40 Utah high schools, violate state law and promote a sexuality that most Utahns find "perverted." The schools are in effect sponsoring the clubs to avoid costly lawsuits. Story