La Verkin, the small community near Zion National Park in the southwestern corner of Utah that two years ago made big news nationwide when its city council passed an ordinance outlawing the United Nations, will revisit the issue this year – this time allowing its residents to vote on the matter.
During a special July 4, 2001, session, the council voted 3-2 to pass an ordinance that essentially banned the global organization from conducting work within city limits. The ordinance also made it a class-C misdemeanor to fly a U.N. flag from city hall or quarter U.N. troops.
 U.N. flag |
A second Utah community, Virgin, also considered passing a similar ordinance but didn’t. Local lawmakers there, however, do require each home to have a firearm.
After passing its new law, La Verkin became embroiled in controversy almost overnight. The ordinance was discussed and debated on newspaper editorial pages, the talk-radio airwaves and in political television broadcasts throughout the country.
Eventually, it caught the attention of state legal eagles.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and the American Civil Liberties Union said they believed the law was unconstitutional, which caused the La Verkin City Council to eliminate portions of the law, such as the requirement that residents post signs if they worked for the United Nations and a prohibition against flying a U.N. flag within city limits.
Even with changes, however, the ordinance was short-lived. Six months later, and after new members were elected, the council voted 4-1 on Jan. 16, 2002, to repeal the ordinance altogether.
And while it seemed as though the second vote would resolve the matter, Councilman Al Snow, the sole vote against the repeal, pledged to bring the ordinance up again via referendum.
“It will be up for a vote again; I will not allow this to go,” he said to an applauding audience. “You’re going to have to kill me to stop me.”
Now the issue has come full circle, according to Debbie Groves, a spokeswoman for city manager Doug Wilson. She told WorldNetDaily this week the issue would be put before voters via referendum Nov. 4.
“We’re going to let the town decide whether they want to be a U.N.-free zone,” Groves said, adding that attorneys were currently working on the language for the ballot.
Groves also said she would be holding workshops between now and the election to educate voters on which box to mark on the ballot if they support the initiative. And she said voter information pamphlets would be distributed.
She declined to predict how the town’s 3,400 citizens would vote.
Meanwhile, Bingham, N.M., the second community to pass a U.N.-free zone, is now the only community in the U.S. with such a distinction. And, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune, it has no intention of reversing its ban.
“We’re going to maintain [the law],” said township Mayor Clay Douglas, of the unincorporated community of 10 people.
The debate over whether the U.S. should be part of the United Nations has raged since the days of the global organization’s predecessor, the League of Nations. Though its creation was supported by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, it was opposed by most other U.S. lawmakers at the time, including Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, R-Mass.
Lodge and others feared the League’s Covenant would violate U.S. sovereignty, a fear shared not only by residents of La Verkin but also millions of other Americans and some lawmakers today.
Those fears were echoed in a speech to the Swiss Parliament April 3, 2001, by C. David Welch, assistant secretary of state for International Organization Affairs. Though he was arguing in favor of Switzerland becoming a bona fide U.N. member – it had been an observer only for years – he told Swiss lawmakers that “in the last 30 years … increasing numbers of Americans came to believe that the views of the United States were not taken seriously at the U.N. …”
In a nationwide referendum in which 55 percent of Swiss voters approved joining the U.N., the historically neutral nation became the world body’s 190th member state in March 2002.
Seventy-five percent of Swiss voters defeated a similar referendum in 1986 during the Cold War.
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