`Natural Family' Feud

Nearly 97% of the 3,500 residents are white. About 80% voted for President Bush in the last election. Many families trace their roots back five generations, to the Mormon pioneers who laid out the town in the 1870s with wide streets, a prudent irrigation system -- and, as a historical account noted, "not a grog shop or gambling saloon or dance hall" to be found.

Conservative values run so deep that one business owner said she's afraid to burn incense in her shop, lest she be dismissed as a New Age nut.

So members of the Kanab City Council hardly thought they were courting controversy when they passed a resolution proclaiming that their top priority was to protect and nurture the "natural family."

The resolution described the natural family as man and woman, duly married "as ordained of God," with hearts "open to a full quiver of children." The council decreed that such households are to be treasured as "the locus of the true common good," a bulwark against crime, delinquency, drug abuse and worse.

With rousing (if not always grammatical) rhetoric, the council promised to do all it could to promote the natural family: "We envision young women growing into wives, homemakers, and mothers; and we see young men growing into husbands, home-builders, and fathers

The resolution passed unanimously in January.

"My gut reaction was, maybe it's a little chauvinistic," said Councilwoman Carol Sullivan, a retired teacher. But her four male colleagues backed the resolution, and no one came to the council meeting to argue against it, so she ignored her reservations.

"I thought, maybe it's just me," Sullivan said.

It wasn't.

The fallout divides Kanab to this day.

It started at the next council meeting, when dozens of indignant residents, some wearing buttons declaring "Quiverless," called the resolution offensive. The opinion page of the local paper -- usually filled with letters thanking neighbors for casseroles and kindness -- sizzled with outrage:

"The embarrassment this has brought to many of the locals here is unforgivable."

"The next step here is the city government going around and painting a red X on the non-natural family door."

And: "God bless us every one