On October 20, just 13 days before Utahns voted on the amendment, the LDS church officially stated that "Any other sexual relations, including those between persons of the same gender, undermine the divinely created institution of the family.

The Church accordingly favors measures that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman and that do not confer legal status on any other sexual relationship.

Others, including moderately conservative Latter-day Saint KSL radio talk show host Doug Wright, believed that since the new statement applied only to "sexual relations" it highlighted precisely how Amendment 3 went too far.

Three candidates for Utah attorney general, including incumbent Republican Mark Shurtleff, issued a joint statement opposing the amendment on August 6.

The reciprocal beneficiary measure failed in the Utah Senate during the 2005 legislative session on a ten in favor to eighteen opposed poll.

On December 20, 2013 Amendment 3 was ruled unconstitutional by Federal District Court Judge Robert J. Shelby in Salt Lake City.

[2] On January 6, 2014 the United States Supreme Court issued a stay of Judge Shelby's ruling "pending final disposition," according to the order.

[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] On March 25, 2013, three same-sex couples, including one already married in Iowa, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Utah seeking to declare Utah's prohibition on the recognition of same-sex marriages unconstitutional under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the United States Constitution.

[6] On December 20, 2013, District Judge Robert J. Shelby struck down the same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional and violating same-gender couples' their rights to due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

[14] On January 16, Attorney General Sean Reyes named Gene C. Schaerr, former law clerk to Supreme Court Justices Warren Burger and Antonin Scalia, as lead outside counsel to make Utah's case to the Tenth Circuit.

On June 25, 2014, a three-judge panel consisting of Judges Paul Joseph Kelly, Jr., Carlos F. Lucero, and Jerome Holmes of the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling in a 2-1 decision.

This decision also became binding on federal courts throughout the Tenth Circuit, including Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico (the only state that already allowed same-sex marriage prior to Kitchen).