Salt Lake City

Your front-page piece regarding Salt Lake City (Part I, Feb. 3) has just come to hand. The subjective impressions conveyed by the article were purportedly based on facts; however, there were some very specific factual errors relating to this office which I must correct for the record.

Your writer said that the attorney general had outlawed the use of the term “sexual intercourse” in the schools. This is patently false, and the attorney general has not even addressed such an issue. The only reason an after-school AIDS lecture would have had to be cancelled would stem from the absence of parental consent, or because of local board policy--not because of anything the attorney general said.

Your writer also asserted that the attorney general’s agents raided a bingo game last year in pursuit of a lottery violation. There was no raid at all, and our agents did not participate in any way. There was an investigation carried out by investigators from the state Division of Consumer Affairs, and eventually our office assisted in obtaining an injunction, but this was under the state’s consumer protection laws, not its anti-gambling laws. The operation, in other words, was a consumer fraud.

Your writer is certainly entitled to his opinions about Utah, or about any other subject, and you are certainly entitled to publish them if you choose. But his seeming portrayal of the attorney general as part of any attempt by the Mormon Church to dominate Utah’s culture/politics is factually flawed. No local media outlet has carried or furthered even one of the many errors contained in your single article, even though these local media are constantly on the alert for instances of inappropriate church influence of the kind to which your article charges the attorney general was an accessory.

PAUL M. TINKER

Chief Deputy Attorney General

Salt Lake City