Gays fighting marriage amendment

Gay and lesbian activists hope to use this weekend's Utah Pride Celebration to counter the LDS Church's latest campaign in support of traditional heterosexual marriage.

In an e-mail to about 4,000 people on Tuesday, Jere Keys, coordinator of Utah Pride, asked those joining the Utah Pride Celebration to "send a message for fairness and equality" to their elected officials by expressing their opposition to a proposed federal marriage amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

The e-mail was in response to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' First Presidency statement reaffirming its support of the proposed marriage amendment, which the Senate could debate and vote on next week.

"Let's not be coy, when the LDS Church says jump, thousands of Utahns ask 'how high?' " Keys' e-mail said.

The church's statement, which was to have been read Sunday to congregations throughout the United States, said in part, "We urge our members to express themselves on this urgent matter to their elected representatives in the Senate."

Keys said as many as 20,000 people could attend the annual Utah Pride Celebration in downtown Salt Lake City on Sunday and predicted more will watch the Pride Parade.

"I think it is important that people get involved," he said. "There is a real difference that can be made. . . . We are a large and thriving community."

Pride festivities will include a political stage with speeches on issues ranging from candidate endorsements to national issues. Two years ago, the events were aimed largely at defeating a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of "a man and a woman." That amendment was later approved by two-thirds of Utah voters.

"Pride is always, in my view, a political statement," said Valerie Larabee, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center of Utah, which sponsors the annual event.

While it is a coincidence the federal marriage amendment debate is taking place at the same time as the Utah Pride celebration, organizers expect it will dominate conversations.

This won't be the first time the U.S. Congress has debated a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. A previous federal amendment was passed by the House but not the Senate.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, co-sponsor of the current federal amendment, said after a Judiciary Committee meeting earlier this month that it is needed to "defend traditional marriage from being undermined."