Salt Lake City -- which serves as the global headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also called the Mormon Church) -- played host over the weekend to the marriage of Jackie Biskupski, the city's first openly gay mayor to her fiancee, Betty Iverson, the Religion News website reports today (August 18, 2016).
"Yesterday our family was brought together by marriage," Biskupski (who is not a Mormon) wrote in a Facebook post on August 15. "We have always been bonded by love, but now we are joined by law."
The private ceremony was performed by Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a longtime friend of the couple and a lawyer who also represented same-sex couples who sued Utah for the right to marry in 2014.
The wedding took place amid protests by several hundred people and mass resignations from the LDS (Latter-day Saints) Church by those upset over its policies toward its LGBT members. At least 100 of those gathered filed papers to remove their names from the church's rolls, according to Quit Mormon, the group that held the gathering. They are protesting a 2015 church ruling that describes sexually active LGBT Mormons as apostates and requires that their children reject their parents before being baptized.
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