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Two years ago Sunday, the Salt Lake County's Clerk's Office claimed a place on the constitutional map of equality, navigating into history with the likes of Little Rock Central High School and the registrar's offices at Ole Miss and Virginia Military Institute.

On Dec. 20, 2013, thanks to a courageous decision by a principled federal judge, the world's eyes turned to the Salt Lake County Clerk's Office as joyous gay couples exercised their constitutional right to marry in perhaps the reddest of red states.

It was a watershed moment. Here at the crossroads of the West, the nation's destiny crossed over to the path of equality and liberty for gay Americans.

During the preceding decade, the state of Utah had constructed a comprehensive system of laws that denigrated gay Utahns through every stage of their lives. Gay Utahns had been targeted by laws that deprived them of basic rights, demeaned them as lesser human beings and denied them full and fair participation in society.

The heart of this system of discrimination was Amendment 3, which broke the hearts of gay Utahns by denying them access to marriage and the opportunity to adopt children together.

Less than six months after the demise of Proposition No. 8, the ballot initiative that had repealed marriage equality in California with strong support from Utah, the impact of the Supreme Court's simultaneous decision to strike down part of the Defense of Marriage Act hit home for Utahns.

The case against Amendment 3 was launched by six brave plaintiffs, the advocacy group Restore Our Humanity and the plucky law firm of Magleby Greenwood. Utah's federal court then became the first to strike down a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage after the Supreme Court's DOMA decision. Judge Robert K. Shelby's decision was soon adopted by courts across the country, and his reasoning was ratified by the Supreme Court earlier this year.

"The right to marry vests in every American citizen," Judge Shelby stated. "Utah's prohibition on same-sex marriage conflicts with the United States Constitution's guarantees of equal protection and due process under the law."

The U.S. Constitution commands nothing more — and will accept nothing less — than equal rights for all. "There is no legitimate reason that the rights of gay and lesbian individuals are any different from those of other people," Judge Shelby wrote.

Judge Shelby noted that "[w]hile it was assumed until recently that a person could only share an intimate emotional bond and develop a family with a person of the opposite sex, the realization that this assumption is false does not change the underlying right [to marry]. It merely changes the result when the court applies that right to the facts before it."

The Constitution, Judge Shelby explained, "protects [the] right [of gay people] to marry a person of the same sex to the same degree that the Constitution protects the right of heterosexual individuals to marry a person of the opposite sex."

"Here, it is not the Constitution that has changed, but the knowledge of what it means to be gay or lesbian."

With those words, the reality of what it means to be gay or lesbian in Utah changed. Within minutes after Judge Shelby's decision was issued, gay couples began rushing to the Salt Lake County Clerk's Office.

Michael Ferguson and Seth Anderson, a pair of returned missionaries with deep Utah pioneer roots, live-tweeted their wedding and became the first gay couple in Utah to marry. Soon the Salt Lake County Clerk's Office was flooded by loving couples, including plaintiffs Laurie Wood and Kody Partridge as well as lead attorney Peggy Tomsic and her wife.

After spending their lives in the closet, in the shadows, or as strangers to the law, these couples celebrated their nuptials as news cameras beamed images of their lives, loves and families to the world.

This was the time and place when, for gay Utahns, the promise of the U.S. Constitution finally overcame prejudiced laws, local opposition and the archaic merger of the state's civil marriage laws with the preferences of its predominant religion.

More than 100 Utah couples are celebrating their second wedding anniversary on Sunday. For the rest of us, Dec. 20, 2013, marks the day when marriage equality was realized as constitutional destiny. Love blossomed and the Constitution was raised as an ensign to the nation.

Brett L. Tolman, John W. Mackay and Paul C. Burke filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark cases that successfully challenged parts of the Defense of Marriage Act and opposed California's Proposition No. 8.