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Annie Barker, Deseret News
The state Capitol transformed into a sea of rainbow on Sunday as hundreds gathered to march, celebrate and commemorate Pride Month.
The event organized by the Utah Pride Center began with a rally on the steps of the state Capitol before attendees marched through the streets of downtown Salt Lake City.
Dozens of attendees carried a 200-foot pride flag through the streets as they marched underneath rainbow-colored balloon arches set up along State Street. As the march concluded in Liberty Park, the balloon arches were joined together to create one massive arch with over 1,000 balloons.
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OGDEN Weber State University announced it will offer a Queer Studies minor this fall, which will be a first in Utah.
The minor was created to help future professionals work better with diverse groups, and there is also hope that these courses will help more people understand others who may be different from them. The best place to start to understand is through education, said Sean Childers-Gray from Ogden Pride.
He said he has seen the intolerance and lost family along the way, and it meant a lot to him to hear Weber State is offering the new minor.
Utah Supreme Court hands S.J. Quinney College of Law alums major victory in transgender rights case
Newswise In a landmark case argued by two S.J. Quinney College of Law alums, the Utah Supreme Court ruled on May 6, 2021, that transgender Utahns have a legal right to change the name and gender marker on their birth certificates and other state records.
Chris Wharton, J.D. 09, and Kyler O’Brien, J.D. 16, represented Angie Rice and Sean Childers-Gray in the case In Re Gray and Rice (20170046) 2021 UT 13 along with attorneys Troy Booher, Beth Kennedy, and Alexandra Mareschal. Beth Jennings, adjunct assistant professor and assistant librarian in the college’s James E. Faust Law Library, provided substantial research support.
Utah Supreme Court upholds rights of trans persons to change name and sex on state records
In a 4-1 decision announced on Thursday, Utah’s Supreme Court expanded transgender rights in the state by siding with two trans petitioners seeking court orders to change their names and sex on birth certificates.
In supporting its ruling, the court emphasized the importance of its decision affirming the right of the appellants, Sean Childers-Gray and Angie Rice, to have the ability to change their names and legal sex designations.
“Language matters,” the court said.
“We address appellants by their appropriate pronouns,” one footnote reads. “The ease with which we could have misgendered them by using opposite-sex pronouns, despite their appearances and pronouncements, amplifies the importance of matching their government identification documents to their held-out identities.”