Patriots for a Moral Utah: Ship Gays out of State

Oh, those wacky hoaxters and their hilarious hoaxery!

A Facebook group called Patriots for a Moral Utah recently posted the text of a "citizen's initiative" calling for a Final "Fair Solution" to Utah's gay problem: Set up a commission to oversee the "relocation of homosexuals to municipalities outside state boundaries or, to their rehabilitation in state sanctioned facilities".

And, of course, it's a complete fabrication.

Apart from a misplaced comma or two (e.g., see above) the initiative is some serious parody, chock full of legalese, annotations and references that show its authors know their stuff and did their homework.

In an era when people think "parody" means the insertion of topical allusions into timeworn anecdotes, it's refreshing to see some good parody, from people who understand what parody really is, for once.

Bravo and/or brava, sirs and/or mesdames. My hat is off to you.

UPDATE

Oh, it looks like Jesse Fruhwirth was already all over this. He was even lucky enough to attend the staged Capitol Hill event (which he wonderfully describes as a "kubuki press conference").

His take on the matter was a little different than mine:

Utah is peculiarly tolerant of homophobia, and perhaps that tolerance emboldens crazy citizens to go public with their crazy ideas. We get it. But this "joke" is likely to garner a helluva lot more groans than laughs--no? If I'm wrong about that, and everybody can hardly catch their breath from laughing long enough to read this post, then I guess I just have sour grapes.

No, it's not just sour grapes -- I know that Fruhwirth is deeply passionate and idealistic, with qualities I greatly admire. I think the very idea of this hoax rightly offends him to the core.

On the other hand, I'm a jaded bastard and (with apologies to Jesse) I still think it was pretty funny.