Irony? It's not even a wrinkled knee! - By Matty Jacobson

Matty Jacobson loves irony. Even more so than
Alanis Morissette. Don'cha think?

When the Utah legislators are in session, hilarity ensues.

I've made no attempts to keep secret my absolute disgust with the bullying problems that lead to suicides in schools. It's pretty customary for a school to hold meetings with the students via counselors following suicides of fellow classmates.

But one Utah lawmaker is trying to preemptively attack the suicide epidemic by requiring monthly meetings regarding bullying, suicide and substance abuse regardless of whether or not these issues take place, rather than having these seminars after the fact.

Good idea, huh?

Well this is obviously a piece of legislation everyone can get behind. I mean, after all, it could actually be a tool to help save students' lives, right? Well, not according to almost half of the Utah legislators who voted on it.

HB 420 only narrowly passed with a vote of 40-30. Now why would lawmakers think this is a bad thing? Well, according to Rep. David Butterfield, "... good grief, let's resist being the school board for every school district."

OK. I suppose that's a valid point. I mean it would be ridiculous to mandate every school do something just because the state said so, right? Butterfield really does make sense when he says school districts need to be in charge of their own programs. Right?

Well, that's all well and dandy until you consider that the same House passed HB 363, which would mandate schools teach abstinence-only and marriage-only sex education or no sex education at all. Since Utah doesn't allow same-sex marriage, then the topic of homosexuality is off the table when it comes to the classroom.

So let me get this straight. Half of Utah's representatives pretty much said "no" to a proposal that could possibly prevent students from committing suicide, and they justified it by telling us that they're not the mommies and daddies of the school districts; the schools should be able to make their own decisions. But they also overwhelmingly decided that schools have absolutely no say when it comes to teaching students about homosexuality or contraception.

Man. I want to be a lawmaker! I would love to get paid to contradict myself on a daily basis! I could triple my income in a week!

Now Utahns, don't go doing anything foolish like registering to vote in order to get these oxymoronic oxygen-wasting morons out of the lawmaking process. Because if that happened, then what would I write new Skewed Reviews about?