COURTESY OF SALLY FARRAR
BIG LOVE
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 earlymorning cold for hours with dozens
HUFFINGTON
03.09.14
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
Sally Farrar
with her
family in San
Francisco,
right after
Christmas
in 2013.