Sunday's marriage at the Gallivan Center capped a decades-long struggle for equality in this land of opportunity and was celebrated as a political victory by the hundreds in attendance — both the invited and the curious.
But the symbolism of the official union between Derek Kitchen and Moudi Sbeity, original plaintiffs in a lawsuit that led to a wave of rulings legalizing marriage for thousands of couples previously denied that right, was accompanied by the intimate nature of two people in love finally being allowed to legally bind their commitment to each other.
Kitchen and Sbeity were married in almost a circus-type atmosphere with the news media there to cover the event and strangers stopping by to acknowledge the marriage's historic importance.
But the wedding was also something to be shared with family and friends, a rite that should be personal and exclusive.
Most couples bask in that joy without the world watching. But most couples don't have to clear the obstacles these two people did to consecrate their union.
Kitchen and Sbeity and two other couples sued Gov. Gary Herbert and other state officials on grounds that Utah's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby struck down that prohibition in December 2013, and gay and lesbian couples immediately began marrying in Utah. Same-sex weddings stopped for a while when the U.S. Supreme Court stayed Shelby's ruling during an appeal. But after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Shelby's order and the Supreme Court declined to take up the case in October 2014, the stay vanished and the marriages resumed.
Since then, dozens of federal judges across the nation have issued similar rulings as the number of states with same-sex marriage jumped from 18 to 37.
The nation's high court is now weighing an appeal in a different same-sex marriage case.
More than 1,000 same-sex couples have married in Utah since Shelby's decision in Kitchen v. Herbert. But the Kitchen-Sbeity ceremony was a public event because of the significance of what they did.
That shouldn't overshadow the meaning this event had for just those two individuals, together, along with those closest to them.
I have seen up close the emotional toll the stigma of same-sex attraction can inflict. My closest lifelong friend is gay. For decades, he felt the need to keep that a secret, even from me.
For those who wrongly believe that attraction is a choice rather than a biological fact, I knew my friend was gay before he knew he was.
He and I double-dated several times in high school, but I knew there was something different about him. He didn't acknowledge it to himself until he was in graduate school. After he got his MBA, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he had a stellar career as an analyst with the Federal Reserve.
It wasn't until about a dozen years ago, when we were in our mid-50s, that he felt comfortable enough to tell me, his close friend of more than 40 years, that he was gay. When I told him I had always known that and it never mattered, he was both surprised and relieved.
When I consider the wedding that took place Sunday, and what it represents, I think of my friend. And I'm happy for him.
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