This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A couple whose lawsuit against Utah's same-sex marriage ban led to the landmark decision that such restrictions violate the U.S. Constitution soon will be restaurateurs in Salt Lake City.
Derek Kitchen and Moudi Sbeity, among the three couples whose lawsuit against the marriage prohibition in the Utah Constitution was upheld by U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby, later married.
In October, they plan to open Laziz Kitchen, featuring Middle Eastern fare, in a business center near 900 South and 200 West.
Laziz stems from the Arabic word for tasty, or delicious. Sbeity fled from Lebanon during the 2006 conflict with Israel.
Kitchen, who was elected last year to the Salt Lake City Council, said he and Sbeity, who were partners before filing the historic lawsuit, operated a business featuring Middle Eastern food for several years, getting their start at Salt Lake City's Farmers Market.
"We decided to turn it into a brick-and-mortar restaurant," he said, "and just completed construction on the building."
They have applied for a limited liquor license to sell wine and beer and were scheduled to have the application approved at next week's meeting of the Utah Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission.
But state law requires liquor-licensing renewals every year — and the renewal date is always Nov. 1. So if they would have gotten the license in October, they would have had to renew it and pay the licensing fee again in November. So the couple are waiting until the November meeting.
Wouldn't you know it? They fought to get one Utah law overturned only to be held up by another.
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A conservative pioneer • Before Gayle Ruzicka, there was Dorothea Masur, a fiery conservative from Ogden who was elected to the Utah House as part of the Ronald Reagan tidal wave in the early 1980s.
Besides her two House terms, she was Ruzicka's predecessor as head of the conservative Utah Eagle Forum from the early 1970s until 1990.
Masur died Sept. 8 at age 93, three days after the death of conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, who founded the Eagle Forum nationwide.
Masur will be buried next to her husband, Marvin, at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, D.C., after a memorial service.
She was a leader in the push to stop taxpayer funding of "objectionable art" through the National Endowment for the Arts. She also opposed government-financed day-care centers.
Masu got into a fight in the late 1980s with then-Gov. Norm Bangerter, a fellow Republican, over state funding for the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women.
She said the commission was anti-family because it was too concerned about the lives of working women "on the backs of Utah's homemakers."
Masur equated the commission with the earlier Equal Rights Amendment, which foes painted as a feminist ploy to demean the traditional roles of women in families.
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Herbert in top five • Utah Republican Gary Herbert is the fifth-most-popular governor in the United States, according to a survey conducted by Morning Consult.
The nonprofit polling and research company reached registered voters nationwide through weekly online polling from May to September to determine approval and disapproval ratings of the country's 50 governors.
Herbert's approval rating was 65 percent.
South Dakota Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard topped the list with a 74 percent approval rating. Kansas Republican Sam Brownback was at the bottom with 23 percent.