Editor’s Note: Mark Alvarez’s comments below are precisely on point. Welcoming attitudes alone won’t change the political landscape.

Equality is right.

Let’s not waste words. Governor Herbert plays a good political game in Utah, but he lacks real understanding of law and discrimination.

Governor Herbert recently spoke on prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation: “Where do you stop? That’s the problem going down that slippery slope. Pretty soon we’re going to have a special law for blue-eyed blondes.”

Hmmm. Yes, a real problem systematic discrimination against blue-eyed blondes in Utah.

Another distraction is the concern over “protected classes.” In the Twenty-First Century, we are all lawyers, but let’s not allow dithering over terminology to infect policy and good values.

Come the activists to share ideas with the governor. Welcome to the table at which diverse views are heard and recorded then mostly ignored. Almost all decision-makers are white and Mormon. Strictly homosexual: all male.

This story is long told among women, Latinos, African-Americans and others seeking inclusion in Utah. The story ultimately will conclude in greater individual freedom and appreciation, yet that resolution remains distant.

Perhaps the story gently has turned positive. LGBT activists emerged from a meeting with the governor proclaiming a “welcoming” attitude. Discrimination is wrong. Against blue-eyed blondes and others.

Nevertheless, activists report no agreement over a task force or further study. Is further study the goal? It recalls Tolstoy and a passage from “Anna Karenina” (Pevear and Volokhonsky translation):

‘All questions were furnished with excellent answers, and answers not open to doubt, since they were not the product of human thought, which is always subject to error, but were the products of institutional activity. The answers were all the result of official data, the reports of governors and bishops, based on the reports of regional superiors and vicars, based for their part on the reports of local officials and parish priests; and therefore all these answers were indubitable.’

With or without study, the value is plain: individual and group freedom should predominate. Those who argue otherwise bear the burden of proof.

Ordinary ignorance is human and understandable. Willful ignorance and political posturing are not. Let’s put aside games. Time to out Governor Herbert, Senator Buttars and others for empty talk and irresponsibility.