It’s one of the best moments of the Utah Legislature — that interview when GOP leaders offer their rationale for allowing so many morality-laced message bills to clog up Capitol Hill’s system.

Today it comes from House Speaker Greg Curtis, in a Salt Lake Tribune story by Rebecca Walsh. Of bills that ban abortion, open the gates for unfettered religious expression in public schools and regulate gay clubs in high schools, Curtis says:

“They generally come around every session. Legislating is all about morality. We represent the people. Some of the representatives are more aggressive than others in doing that. Some legislators want to push the envelope on court rulings.”

Hmm.

First of all, Curtis is a lawyer — though his specialty lies in using his political influence for squeezing municipal zoning rules to allow sprawling development along the Wasatch Front. Senate President John Valentine also is an attorney.

Curtis may not know the fine points of constitutional law, but a whole stack of eager lawyers on the Hill can help him out. Republican Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has testified, for instance, to the constitutional shakiness of several message bills.

Second, the speaker and senate president, along with their majority leaders and whips, wield control over which bills move through the committee and floor process. They oversee their party caucuses, where presumably, serious arm wrestling occurs in weeding out bills for the 45-day session.

One theory for leaders allowing their party’s rubes and goofballs to run amok with morality bills is the cover it provides for the real agenda. So far, that would include the well-financed-from-outside school voucher bill, which is fast-tracking its way to the state Senate and then to the guv’s desk for his anticipated signature.

Does anyone think for a minute that as Sen. Chris Buttars blathered on about kids who can’t wear CTR shirts to school, and Orem freshman Rep. Stephen Sandstrom pulled out dusty Ronald Reagan quotes in defending a draconian anti-abortion bill, that other more “go-to” guys like Rep. Steve Urquhart and Sen. Curt Bramble weren’t doing the GOP’s serious heavy lifting?

(Bramble is the brains behind a bill to make school board races partisan. He says it’s only because he wants more citizen interest and involvement in those historically dull elections. The truth is, he wants the well-organized and powerful right wing of his party to control those races at the caucus level, thus ensuring ultra-conservative school boards and yet another Republican power base in Utah politics.)

In my fantasy world, legislative leaders would come clean at least a teeny-weeny bit and admit that this is how their game gets played. So much of it revolves around diverting constituent and media attention from the real — and very unsexy — business on the hill.

It’s just one big shrug of the shoulders, one big “sorry, it’s not my problem.” And then we all go on.

I’m sitting with a business associate at lunch at Fiddler’s Elbow in Sugar House. On the way in, I had grabbed a City Weekly from the sidewalk newspaper box. I set the paper beside me on the table.

A twentysomething woman approaches me with another publication in her hand: In Utah, which is The Salt Lake Tribune’s “let’s try like hell to attract younger readers” weekly supplement. “Which one is the best paper?” the woman asks, pointing to the paper in her hand, and then to the City Weekly on the table.

My lunch partner does not hesitate. “City Weekly,” he says.

I have to tell you, I am a professional busybody. I talk to everyone. I ask them personal questions, I often “interview” total strangers. My family gives me grief for it, but I can’t help it. I worked for so long on my newspaper column, and before that, news stories. It was always tough to pass up a possible column idea. And I love people. I want to know all about them, all the time.

I start talking to this woman. She lives in Phoenix. I wonder if she’s only visiting town or has she recently moved here? I’m not just being nosy. She may be looking for an apartment. I’m prepared to point her toward the classifieds.

Her voice catches a bit. “I’m sort of visiting,” she says. “My, uh, grandparents were the people who froze to death this week.”

Anyone who read a newspaper this past week, tuned in to radio or watched the local news knows this story. The Palmers, married for 56 years, died together last week when their car got stuck in the snow on a remote mountain road in central Utah. Their old Cadillac had no heater. They had no provisions for cold weather. Rescue teams found them within a short distance of each other, about three miles from the car, dead of exposure.

Their granddaughter from Phoenix points me to her mother, sitting at a table about four feet from mine. I approach her, tell her how sorry I am for her loss. Suddenly, I am embracing a woman I’ve never met. I hold on for a couple of seconds.

“I am so sorry,” I whisper in her ear. “This is so sad.”

Her eyes fill with tears.

I ask her if she knows anything more about how her parents died.

“The media has been wonderful,” she says. “They reported it accurately.” Her parents were both in their 70s, and her dad sometimes had a problem with dozing at the wheel on longer trips. That frightened her mother, who wanted to avoid driving through Spanish Fork Canyon — the narrow, winding, U.S. highway known for horrific crashes and dubbed “Utah’s death strip.” So they took a side road, seldom traveled in winter and nearly 7,000 feet at its summit. Their car got stuck in snow and they apparently started walking to get help.

Help was 40 miles away. They made it three miles on foot.

The Palmers’ daughter tells me, with her hand on a glass of beer, “we’re the other side of the family.” In Utah, of course, that means you have lapsed on your Mormonism. It may or may not have led to emotional and spiritual distance from your family.

I sense there is plenty of love for this daughter, sister, aunt. She tells me her family is certain her parents died within moments of each other. “They were always together,” she says. “We think mom’s spirit left her body, then went to Dad. She wouldn’t have wanted him to be alone.”

In Mormon culture, such stories are labeled as “faith-promoting.” They have a certain feel to them; a formula. They usually focus on a loved one helping another to pass into the hereafter. They rely heavily on miracles and coincidence. God’s hand is always present.

Growing up Mormon, I heard these stories throughout my young life — in Sunday School lessons and in monthly “fast and testimony” meetings, where church members witnessed to their faith in God, Christ and the Holy Ghost.

I loved these stories 40 years ago; I love them still. I embrace them. I do not question or doubt them. I’ve lost enough loved ones in my life that any explanation or attempt to ease a loss somehow soothes me.

I give this grieving woman’s hand one last squeeze. Then I rejoin my table.

The Utah air, that is. It’s clean. I can’t see it, smell it, or — best of all — taste it anymore.

Twenty-one days of smog, red-alert, and no-burn days: BE GONE!

The snow has been falling for four hours. The storm ranks about a 2 on the 1 to 10 scale for winter drama, but that’s OK. It’s falling steadily and we’ll take what we can get.

Just got back from a run. Roads, sidewalks are like glass. That forced me to plod along slowly. I don’t know how long I was gone; didn’t care. When I was much younger, I used to keep track of time on the road. Now I just listen to my tunes and breathe. Time slips by fast enough anyway; why count it when you’re flying down the pavement on your own power?

Tunes on today’s running list:

Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach: “In the Darkest Place,” “Toledo,” “This House is Empty Now,” “God Give Me Strength”

The soundtrack of “Garden State”

Nirvana: “Heart-Shaped Box”

The Decemberists: “Sixteen Military Wives,” “Red Right Ankle”