UTAH GAYS RUSH TO MARRY

More than 70% of the marriage licenses issued in the US state of Utah over the last week have been to gay and lesbian couples.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, 905 of the 1,225 marriage licenses granted in the state since 20 December have been issued to same-sex couples.

That was the day that US District Judge Robert Shelby ruled that the state’s ban on marriage equality was unconstitutional.

Desperate efforts by the state to overturn the ruling have thus far been unsuccessful.

Four Utah counties that had at first refused to allow gay couples to marry told AP on Thursday that they would now accede to the court’s ruling.

The predominantly conservative state still plans to take the issue to the US Supreme Court as well as the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in a bid to once again ban same-sex marriages in Utah.

More than 65% of the state’s citizens voted in 2004 to define marriage as only being possible between a man and a woman.

Meanwhile, the  fight against same-sex marriage in America suffered another blow when a federal judge in Ohio, where gay marriage is not legal, ruled that the state must recognise an out of state gay marriage for the purposes of a death certificate.

The Human Rights Campaign noted that while the Ohio ruling is limited to the specific case in question, the judge wrote that “once you get married in one state, another state cannot summarily take your marriage away…”

Including Utah, eighteen American states now issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.