As of today Oct. 6, same sex marriage is legal in Utah! Now this is a complex issue and the Supreme Court can be occasionally confusing, but this is still great news for everyone who identifies as LGBT+ and everyone who has family members who are, especially those who have been waiting a long time to be able to get married. This decision has taken almost a year to be settled, but as of 10:10 am on October 6, marriage equality came to Utah! This long series of court cases and appeals began last December just a few days before Christmas. On December 20, 2013, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby declared Utah’s ban on Same Sex marriage unconstitutional. There was, for a few days, a rush of people heading to the court house. In Utah County, 900 couples got married in the first 6 days following the ruling. Some counties however chose to close for a few days rather than issue marriage certificates. During the next 4 days the state submitted 3 appeals for a stay on issuing marriage licenses.
Four days later, on Dec. 24, Christmas Eve, the tenth district court rejected the third appeal for a stay on marriage which was then granted by the Supreme Court on January 6, 2014, pending a decision by the tenth district court. The Supreme Court explained to the state that while they didn’t have to marry same sex couples at the moment, the decision rested with the circuit court. Before this stay, 1,360 couples were married, many of those couples had been waiting years for that opportunity. 5 months later on June 25th the tenth district court upheld their decision to uphold the ruling of Judge Shelby, this came with a stay on the implementation pending further appeals. This meant that same sex marriages were legal in Utah, however the state did not have to, at that time, issue any marriage licenses.
The Supreme Court ruling on June 18th, 2014, placed a stay on recognition of federally recognized (out of state) same sex marriages. So this meant that the state had to recognize the marriages that took place in Utah in December, however no other same sex marriages, including those performed out of state, were recognized. So if you wanted to get married to someone of the same gender and you traveled out of state, got married and then came back to Utah, the state would not recognize your marriage. The state appealed to the Supreme Court on august 5th, seeking to uphold the marriage ban. The Supreme Court also had appeals from Virginia, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Indiana. All five states had their marriage bans declared unconstitutional and their district courts were upholding the rulings, thus all five went to the Supreme Court to appeal the court’s decision. On October 6, 2014 the Supreme Court announced that they were not hearing any appeals this year on same sex marriage.
This decision placed it back to the tenth district court of appeals to make a ruling on the implementation of their previous ruling. They mandated that the state begin issuing marriage licenses for same sex couples in Utah. This means that here in Utah, we have marriage equality! Everyone can get married, regardless of gender! Utah joins 23 other states in fully recognizing marriage. Other states include California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Delaware, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maine, New Jersey, New York, and Washington D.C..The tenth district court’s decision impacts several other states which means that we can likely expect marriage equality to come soon to Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming. Now while many are saying that they wish the Supreme Court had made a full ruling declaring all bans on same sex marriage to be unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has said that they won’t hear any appeals from Utah and so marriage equality is legal and permanent here in Utah, and no one is complaining about that. Hopefully the remaining 26 states will soon follow and marriage equality will come to all fifty states.
The access and diversity center certainly had something to say about the ruling. There were both smiles and frustration all around. Lee Austin said “About freaking time!” This seemed to be the general feeling among people, myself included. Tait had this to say “The fact that they had to go to the supreme court is silly” There was a lot of resistance through the state to appeal and the state did that, whether or not the state was right in doing that is a discussion for another day. Now the state can choose to refile appeals next year if they so choose, however by next year a lot of people probably won’t even care to push for an appeal anymore, and the Supreme Court likely would not hear an appeal after rejecting appeals this year. So marriage equality is here in Utah and that is something to be celebrated. It’s a good day in Utah knowing that, at least here, everyone can marry and spend their life with the person they love, no matter what their gender is.
