Salt Lake City has its first female mayor, and she's a lesbian. To rub salt into the wound and make her point, Jackie Biskupski was sworn in with her lesbian fiancee at her side.

The Mormon Church has been rife with prejudices (against women, people of color, and gays) since its founding, and although the church's headquarters and mother Temple are in Temple Square, the center of the Salt Lake, the city like large cities in all states is a magnet for gay people fleeing homes, families, and farms of rural areas. Ms Biskupski, a democrat, won over a Republican in a red state with a 52% majority. As they say, "You go, girl."

When I was last in Salt Lake City in the mid 1980s, there was a gay bar to which one could go only with a gay friend who was known to the door man. I stood outside asking people to let me enter with them. My reason was not social but historic. I wanted to be in the only gay bar ever to exist in Utah. How wrong I was. What a difference 30 years has made in the advancement of gay people, even in Mormon Utah.