Sunday, April 30, 2006

Welcome!

From the New York Times:
KANAB, Utah — Most businesses in this southern Utah town have a tourism booster sticker in their front windows saying, "Everyone Welcome Here," which sounds pretty tame until you get to the little rainbow-colored people beneath the text.

Are those little people gay?

Terril Honey, for one, is convinced that they are. "The rainbow colors are their symbol," said Mr. Honey, a member of the City Council and owner of Honey's Jubilee, a grocery store.

Honey's Jubilee? Honey's Jubilee?? Gayest name for a store. Ever.

Mr. Honey has decided not to post the stickers at his store because he believes they would offend some of his customers. ...

Presumably, those who didn't wander in thinking Honey's Jubilee was a gay bar.

The mayor, Kim T. Lawson, recently floated a compromise to bridge the sticker gap: another sticker, similar but without the rainbow people.

That might be a compromise if someone was against the concept of welcome, but for ... oh, I don't know. I give up.
And the Kanab Chamber of Commerce intends to have new stickers, with the Chamber of Commerce logo replacing the little people, ready in time for the start of the tourism season next month.

"We don't want to step on the merchants that came together and did the 'everybody welcome' campaign, but on the other hand we want every business in town to feel comfortable putting out the same message," said Ted Hallisey, the acting president of the chamber. "If that means a little different sticker, we're O.K. with that — the main message is that everybody's welcome."

Except rainbow people.

I'd ask you to remind me never to go to Kanab, Utah, but that's really not necessary.

3 comments:

MsYvone said...

I can't believe how much i've learned about Utah since reading blogs!

More Utah unwelcoming

What's funny is, the last group of people I know that went to Utah, were a large group of my friends that happen to be rainbow people!

MsYvone said...

hey! I reread that post I linked to, and WAHLA!, it's KANAB! Who knew?

Peter said...

*Chortle* For some reason, I'm just getting the biggest kick out of thinking of some Archie Bunker type, except he is mormon, and his nose is all in a snit when he sees the little rainbow people... "We'll I never!" he says, and walks away. I don't know why, I just find that funny.