Mixed marriages on rise

RIVERTON — Susan Sakurai remembers her parents' words of caution more than 30 years ago when she told them she planned to marry a Japanese immigrant.

"They had seen after World War II how people treated children that were half," she said. "They just worried about that and didn't want that to happen to me."

Susan, who is white, was a child 40 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court said states couldn't ban interracial marriages. Sitting next to her husband, Mitsuyuki, an immigrant from Japan, Sakurai smiles as she says, "It wasn't a problem."

On June 12, 1967, the Loving v. Virginia ruling said states couldn't bar whites from marrying non-whites.

Fewer than 1 percent of the nation's married couples were interracial in 1970. However, from 1970 to 2005, the number of interracial marriages nationwide has soared from 310,000 to nearly 2.3 million, or about 4 percent of the nation's married couples, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. In 2005, there were also nearly 2.2 million marriages between Hispanics and non-Hispanics.

Like most other states, Utah once had a law against interracial marriages. It was passed by the territorial Legislature in 1888 and wasn't repealed until 1963, said Philip Notarianni, director of the Division of State History.

"Utah, both in enacting and repealing it, probably just was going along with the national sentiment," he said.

Race isn't an issue today for Utah's predominant LDS faith, church spokesman Scott Trotter said.

The late President Spencer W. Kimball of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had cautioned members about interracial marriages, but it was also a revelation issued by President Kimball that opened up the LDS priesthood to worthy black males in 1978.

Before then, the ban meant blacks weren't admitted to LDS temples and couldn't be married there, said Cardell Jacobson, sociology professor at Brigham Young University.

"The climate is much better," he said, as LDS Church members have become more accepting since the 1978 revelation.

While "there are still a lot of people raising eyebrows" at interracial couples, it's more likely because of the unusualness in predominantly white Utah than disapproval.

"In the '60s and '70s, people were discouraged from interracial marriage, intergroup," he said. "Now it's much more open, accepting."

That was helped during last year's 176th Annual General Conference, Jacobson said, when LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke out against racism, saying "no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ."