Huffington Magazine Issue 90 | Page 4

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR HUFFINGTON 03.02.14 ART STREIBER Between Two Worlds I N THIS WEEK’S issue, Lila Shapiro travels to Salt Lake City, Utah, to talk to recently married gay couples in the state. Lila meets Sally, 48, a former Mormon who married Brenda, her longtime partner and the mother of her children, after Judge Robert Shelby of the U.S. District Court for Utah struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage on Dec. 20 of last year. The window of opportunity to marry closed shortly thereafter, however. As Lila writes, “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.” As a newly married woman, Sally found herself stuck between two cultures — her long-held Mor- mon values and the unfamiliar gay rights movement. “I don’t fit in anywhere,” Sally tells Lila the morning after a mass wedding reception for gay couples in the state. “I’m not angry at the church, but I don’t fit in there, and I didn’t fit in last night.” Despite her discomfort, for the first time in her life, Sally was compelled to stand up for gay rights in the weeks after the initial ruling and her marriage. “My heart is heavy, and I am tired,” she wrote in a blog post for Marriage Equal- Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook