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A supporter of gay marriage waves a flag during a rally at the Utah State Capitol, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014, in Salt Lake City || Huffpost |
On a cold Saturday last month, hundreds of couples swirled around a 6-foot-high cake at a mass wedding reception at a Salt Lake City concert hall, celebrating the recent court ruling that had unexpectedly allowed them to marry their partners. A pair of gray-haired women in tuxedo vests held each other close, laughing at a private joke. A smooth-faced man pressed his cheek against his partner's three-day scruff. A Beyoncé cover of the classic Etta James song summed up the mood: "At last."Sally Farrar didn't join in. She and her partner of 27 years, and wife of 19 days, Brenda, stood off to the side, like wallflowers at the junior prom. "I'm so uncomfortable right now," Sally said, a frown on her face and a bottle of water in her hand. "I'm freaking out."
Mormons have never been big partiers. The religion bans the one substance that most American adults consider essential to a good time, and even though Sally ended her formal relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints nearly 30 years ago, around the time she began a romantic relationship with Brenda, she still won't touch a drop, even at parties. In many ways, she remains loyal to the conservative Mormon values that shaped her childhood and still dominate the culture and politics of the city where she lives.She votes for Republicans. She works as a title attorney and gives a chunk of her income to charities, though not to the church. She and Brenda have raised a pair of straight, clean-cut, all-American kids -- a high-school baseball star, Ben, 18, and a biochemistry major, Maddie, 21. And until this January night, neither Sally nor most of her friends in Salt Lake City's small community of Mormon and formerly Mormon gays and lesbians had ever been to a gay pride event, or a gay party of any kind.
Now, at 48, she found herself at a precarious juncture, staring ahead at the unknown territory of the gay-rights movement while trying to stay close to the familiar guideposts of her Mormon past."I'm so uncomfortable," Sally repeated to her friends, eyeing a portly man with strings of tiny white Christmas lights encircling the pair of pointy cones protruding from the chest of his gown."Oh come on," said Deb Wells, a 50-year-old former Mormon and lesbian who works as a massage therapist. "Big fucking deal.""You don't feel uncomfortable at all?" Sally asked, pressing the point."Hell no!" Deb said, shaking her hips to the rhythms of Michael Bublé.The drag queen's electric boobs sparkled back into view. "See there?" said Sally. "Right there? That's weird."
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| Sally, far left, and Brenda, far right, with their children, Benjamin and Maddie, and Maddie's husband, Bryce, center, in San Francisco this December || huffpost |
Outsiders often say the same about Mormons, but members of the LDS church don't see themselves that way. One of the central symbols of their faith is a beehive -- an image of harmony, or conformity, depending on your point of view. They dress modestly, in pleated khakis or knee-length skirts, but not to the conspicuous degree of the Amish or the Hasidim. Since they renounced polygamy more than a century ago, they've been intent on weaving themselves into the fabric of mainstream American culture.With that culture growing more accepting of gays in recent years, the Mormon church has softened its rhetoric against homosexuality. Yet the church leadership in Salt Lake City remains firmly opposed to same-sex marriage, limiting access to its 141 sacrosanct temples worldwide to straight couples who have been married by the church and lesbian and gay individuals who choose a life of celibacy.
So Sally was as surprised as anyone when Judge Robert Shelby of the U.S. District Court for Utah, a registered Republican, struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage on Dec. 20, thrusting Utah to the volatile forefront of the gay-rights movement. With Mormons making up more than 60 percent of its population, Utah is the second-most religious state in the nation after the Baptist stronghold of Mississippi, according to a 2013 Gallup poll.Sally and Brenda seized the moment, exchanging vows at the county clerk's office in Salt Lake after standing outside in the early-morning cold for hours with dozens of other couples. If they'd waited a few more weeks, they would have missed their chance. On Jan. 6, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the state's request to stop marrying same-sex couples for the immediate future, as the case makes its way through the appeals courts. By the time the mass wedding reception took place nearly a week later, the window for same-sex marriages had closed. Couples at the party were not only toasting their recent commitments but also raising funds for a looming court battle to keep their marriage rights.Sally grew up hearing about the feats of her spiritual forebears, the Mormon families that wandered west in the early 19th Century looking for religious freedom in the face of persecution. Until Shelby's decision, however, she'd never imagined she'd make her own public stand for freedom and acceptance. It was a role that would take some getting used to..more brief
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