Salt Lake City, home of the Mormon Church, has elected an openly gay mayor. Jackie Biskupski has been elected as the first openly gay mayor of Salt Lake City, a week after protests against the Mormon Church’s new anti-LGBT family policies took place in the city. Although a narrow win for the new mayor, with 52 percent of the votes, her election is seen as a huge victory for the LGBT community. "Today is not just about making history, it is about people. It is about affecting change,” she said. Her election comes at at time when LGBT rights are a talking point in the city. A newly-updated Mormon handbook says that say that being in a same-sex marriage warrants ousting from the religion and that children of gay parents must wait until they are 18 and disavow homosexual relationships to be baptised. Hundreds of Mormon followers took to the streets of Salt Lake City, the church’s place of headquarters, in protest of the changes and pledged to resign en masse from the Mormon Church. Most recently a local judge ordered a foster child be removed from the care of a lesbian couple and instead placed with a heterosexual couple. Initially stating that the child’s wellbeing was at risk, the judge later reversed his decision following a national outrage.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 20th November 2015 - 1:25pm