Utah is thought of, and I hope still tries to be, one of the most faith-centered, family-oriented states in the nation. But in case you haven’t noticed, our major newspapers seem to want to change all that. One small but significant example is something that happened this past week at Utah Valley’s Provo Daily Herald. This is not the first time a Utah newspaper has attempted to misrepresent, denigrate, censor, and silence my conservative stand. In fact, every major paper in this state has given me the same treatment, the Herald now adding itself to the list. The Herald appears to me to have acted in an especially shady way because it sought me out and then somewhere along the line decided to use me as a springboard for ridiculing traditional values. Incredibly, these local newspapers have invited my opinions, scoffed at my opinions, and refused to publish my opinions unless I changed my opinions! Such bullying is unAmerican, not to mention unprofessional, and makes me wonder what they are afraid of, why they are angry and defensive, and what they hope to accomplish. Of course newspapers can print, or not print, whatever they choose, and the community in turn has the obligation to judge and discern their material. Personally, I think it’s bad enough that our local papers increasingly scorn traditional morality. But the worst thing in my opinion is that these papers pretend to be something they are not: representative of the values of the community they serve. In addition, they presume to assign new, more “diverse” values to us in order to project what the Daily Herald calls “ a more positive image” to the world,” which seems to mean we should tolerate degeneracy so we don’t appear embarrassingly out-of-step. No, thanks. If we are who we say we are, the image we project should be at odds with the world’s seamy side.

Be that as it may, because this is still a blessedly free country I am at liberty to make these disingenuous tactics known and to publish my views elsewhere, such as on this website. The following is a recent print exchange between the Daily Herald and me.

First, brief excerpts from the Daily Herald’s editorial, which can be read in it's entirety on their website:
(note: Copyright laws don't allow us to provide the entire editorial on our site, but only brief excerpts, which you will find below. So, to read the whole piece, please click here to go to the newspaper's website to read the complete editorial.)

Brief excerpts from the 7/22/07 Provo Daily Herald editorial entitled "Celebrity antics no reason to shun them":

. . . singer Darryl Worley has been known as a regular guy, a straight arrow . . .

. . . it came as . . . a shock to SCERA . . . to find that Worley . . . posed nude for . . . Playgirl . . .

. . . we will admit that any 42-year-old man who can still flaunt his physique in a women's sex magazine probably deserves some credit, though you'd think he ought to have outgrown such puerile pursuits. . .

The silliness of Worley's posing for Playgirl is exceeded only by statements like this one from Stephen Graham, the self-appointed guardian of local values . . .

"If someone is coming to our community and has demonstrated that they don't hold to our community standards then we have the right and should shun them, and not invite them to our community."

We are more horrified by such expressions of local zealotry than by Worley's bare behind. Such Puritan pronouncements do not project a positive image of the Utah Valley community . . .

Click here to read the entire editorial.

Next, my request to respond:

Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 09:27:05 -0600
To: Daily Herald
Subject: Sunday's editorial - I offer an op-ed response

I read with interest your editorial in today's (Sunday, July 22) paper, wherein you quoted me relative to my position on community values. Since you didn't have the space to give my full quote, I wonder if you would entertain an op-ed piece from me where I can more fully comment. I can have it done today, if you wish, for tomorrow's paper. Or whenever.

Thanks,

Stephen Graham
Standard of Liberty
801-830-8418
sgraham@standardofliberty.org

Then, the submission of my op-ed, emailed before the deadline, carefully kept down to the prescribed 700 words, and addressing only the issue at hand:

Last Thursday evening out of the blue I received a call from a reporter at the Daily Herald politley asking me, as “a leader in the community and in the state when it comes to family values,” what my opinion was about a man named Worley. Evidently he had posed nude in sexually explicit photos for the July 2007 issue of Playgirl magazine and was set to perform on Pioneer Day at the SCERA Shell, and the paper was doing an article on the controversy. I try to keep up on things, but this was all news to me, including my leadership status. I responded with a general statement that went something like this: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that obscenity and indecency are community matters, and that each community is not only welcome, but obligated to establish its own standards and then uphold them. Communities were established to protect their citizens from attacks by outside forces who oppose them (such as how the Mormons relocated to a place they could live and worship freely which event we celebrate this month). It would seem logical that we would wish to hold invited professional visitors, publicly, and in their private lives as far as we know, to our local standards. People need to know there are consequences for bad behavior in a society that has standards of decency. I was rightly quoted as saying, "If someone is coming to our community and has demonstrated that they don't currently hold to our community standards then we have the right and should shun them, and not invite them to our community."

This newspaper then printed an editorial, not the promised article, that seemed to scorn me as a “self-appointed guardian of local values,” and “a straight-laced somebody,” and to disparage my views (which happen to be widely shared by the community), as “silly,” “local zealotry” and “Puritan.” Perhaps the paper has done itself more harm than good by showing its contempt for this community’s traditional values. Here are some examples of this contempt.

The newspaper “admits” that “a 42-year-old probably deserves some credit for flaunting his physique in a women's sex magazine.” Why is that? What kind of man at any age does such things? Such a person is not just “immature,” as the paper hints.

The newspaper commends the SCERA for “responding like a grown-up” by getting over its shock at Worley’s conduct and asserting that the show would go on. I ask, would a grown-up expose a family audience including children to a live performance by a person who just posed for sex photos in a national magazine in order to get rid of his “squeaky-clean image?” I call it irresponsible. The facts show the man cannot be trusted.

As for the SCERA, shock is good. It teaches us something is wrong. We’re not supposed to pretend wrong doesn’t exist. For their own good, people should experience negative consequences for bad behavior, like maybe getting their performances for family audiences cancelled. Sadly, the SCERA seems to have gotten over its shock and unhappiness at Worley’s bad conduct rather quickly.

Of course it’s considered an absolute necessity these days for everybody to show the utmost tolerance. This has come to mean that we are supposed to excuse all human weakness because human weakness is human. This hazy sort of tolerance makes it more and more difficult for anybody to be anti-anything. As a result, a world, or a community, that winks at uncomfortable truths and tosses aside the value of rightness and goodness will find itself so afraid of standing for something that it loses its footing and is carried unresisting into the popular tide of depravity.

I believe my views were sought out under false pretenses upon which I was assigned derogatory labels, giving the newspaper a forum to set more “diverse” standards for all of us. This was just another attempt to shame all of us into opening our community to anybody and anything. And who gets to draw a line, if any? Evidently, the newspaper, not the people.

A newspaper that claims it is “horrified” by the very idea of a community setting and holding to standards reflecting traditional values is totally out of touch with its readers here in Utah Valley. At least I hope it is.

I figured they wouldn’t have the courage to print it, but I didn’t figure on this lengthy personal email to me from Randy Wright at the Daily Herald:

Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 4:48 PM
Subject: Re: Op-ed proposal

Steve --

I think I may not have communicated my central point clearly. You are welcome to lay out your philosophy of how communities can or should control choices of celebrity visitors, movies or whatnot. In the interest of full disclosure, I think you should also mention that you demanded that the SCERA pay Worley and cancel his appearance. I'm trying to avoid what you seem to insist upon, i.e. a word-by-word debate on the editorial page. I might be OK with this if your comments were fair representations of the Herald's view, but they are not. Specifically:

-- Our reference to "a straight-laced somebody" was not aimed at you and need not be read that way. It refers to those who find difficulty being in the world but not of it (i.e. the over-reactors).

-- You take "silliness" out of context, since we applied the term to Worley.

-- No one who knows his history can say that it's unfair to note a Puritan echo in the concept of shunning. Your shot at the Herald on this point is therefore unfounded.

-- The Herald clearly did not support Worley in his Playgirl escapade, though you spin the tale as though we did. In fact, we made many disparaging remarks about Worley, suggesting that he is immature. Yet you seem to want to tag the Herald with support of his nude posing. This unfairly represents our position. The issue raised by the editorial is whether the community should "shun" anybody who has misbehaved at some time in life. You don't address that in much detail because you're too busy arguing. What's more, if an outside performer ought to be shunned, why shouldn't current residents who don't share your set of values be shunned as well? You don't explain how you would draw lines to differentiate between outsiders and locals who misbehave. The core issue here is whether outside performers who don't share "our" values and with whom "we" disagree ought to be allowed into your perceived enclave.

-- Clearly, you believe that you speak for the entire community. Therefore, it is fair to call you a self-appointed guardian. I don't remember voting on this. But again, you use your few words to simply argue with the Herald rather than to lay out your own philosophy.

-- Our comment about "credit" to Worley for being able, at age 42, to qualify for a nude spread was a comment about his physical fitness and a mild jab at flabby middle-aged men. I think it's clear that the editorial was not praising Worley's appearance in the magazine. We rather harshly criticized it. So this characterization of yours is unfair.

-- You do not squarely address the issue of entertainers such as Daniel Radcliffe and Julie Andrews and their acceptance by the community despite questionable activities. Avoiding this central theme in favor of a spitting match with the Herald is not helpful to our readers.

-- Finally, we don't promise people anything during interviews. Our needs can change based on changing circumstances or editorial value judgments. When you speak to a representative of any newspaper, you should expect that your words may be published in various contexts. I do not agree with your suggestion that the Herald was somehow unfair to you because we chose to write an editorial.

You should know that I have received considerable positive feedback from the community on the editorial, including one interesting comment from an elderly Mormon woman who is about as conservative as they come. She didn't approve of Worley's nude appearance, but she stated strongly that trying to close off local culture to such people is wrong. Bottom line: I'll give you one more shot at this. If you would like your voice to be heard, you need to stay on point.

Randy Wright
Executive Editor
Daily Herald
Provo, UT

And then on second thought I sent him this:

July 24, 2007

Dear Randy,

Since you insist on editing my editorial, I will just publish it myself on my website.

Thanks anyway.

Steve