It’s Official – Salt Lake City Elects Its First Openly Gay Mayor

The votes have been counted and the election certified. Jackie Biskupski is now the mayor-elect of Salt Lake City, Utah.

“Today is not just about making history,” Mayor-elect Jackie Biskupski said after the election was certified Tuesday. “It is about people. It is about affecting change.”

That Biskupski is a lesbian isn’t the issue. It’s that an openly-gay woman who is a single mother and not a Mormon could win in the heart of conservative Utah, in the city that is home to the Mormon Church.

Biskupski is no political novice. She became the first openly-gay elected lawmaker in Utah in 1998.

NBC News notes that back then, “some of her colleagues in the heavily Mormon and conservative Legislature wouldn’t shake her hand.” But now she says, “we’ve come a long way from, gosh, when I first got elected.”

Also official is the election of Derek Kitchen, one of the plaintiffs in Kitchen v. Herbert, the federal court case that won same-sex marriage for Utah. Kitchen will serve on the Salt Lake City Council.

 

EARLIER:

Salt Lake City (Probably) Just Elected Its First Lesbian Mayor And A Gay City Councilman

 

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