SALT LAKE CITY — State Sen. Derek Kitchen, who successfully sued the state over a ban on same-sex marriage, has announced that he and his husband have decided to divorce.

“Gay people are just like straight people,” Kitchen, D-Salt Lake City, told KSL Monday, adding that he and his husband, Moudi Sbeity, “still love each other very much. We just happen to be going down different paths and this is the right decision for us.”

Kitchen said he sees his marriage as having been “very successful,” and that now his “hope is that what this means for the community is that they see that we are just like everybody else and that everybody’s relationship is individual. This is equality, right?”

A former Salt Lake City councilman, Kitchen is the only openly gay member of the Utah Legislature after being elected to the Utah Senate in 2018. He and Sbeity were among three couples who challenged the Utah Constitution’s prohibition against same-sex marriage in a case known as Kitchen vs. Herbert.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined in 2014 to hear Utah’s appeal of a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding the right of gays and lesbians to marry, as well as petitions from four other states, making same-sex marriage legal in those states. The following year, the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law of the land.

Kitchen announced the split in an Intagram post Sunday that he and Sbeity, who were wed in June 2015 before nearly 1,000 well-wishers gathered at downtown Salt Lake City’s Gallivan Center, “remain good friends, business partners, and supporters for each other” and “will continue to stand tall and work for our community.”

The post, which also appeared on Sbeity’s Instagram account, also said the couple “are incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish together — from our fight for marriage equality, growing two businesses, and running for public office” but that they “have decided to pursue individual paths and end our marriage.”

When they were fighting to marry, the post said, it was “for all the challenges and rights that come along with it.”

Kitchen said it was important to make a public statement about the end of the marriage.

“If we were anybody else, we would probably keep it a private matter,” he said, as most people in the same situation do, including elected officials. “The only reason this matters is because we fought for marriage and everybody felt invested in us. Otherwise, it is what it is.”

Equality Utah Executive Director Troy Williams suggested that public role may have had an impact on their relationship.

“We are deeply grateful to both Derek and Moudi for their courage to bring marriage equality to Utah,” he said. “It’s incredibly vulnerable to put your personal life into the public spotlight. Few understand the toll it can take. Relationships mature, evolve and sometimes shift. We love them both, and wish them the best on their journey.”

Being the face of same-sex marriage in Utah, Kitchen said, was tough at times.

“If we didn’t do this publicly, would we still be married? I don’t know,” he said. “Being a public figure and having our marriage the topic of conversation, it does put pressure on us. And it did have a lot of stressful moments in the past that I think brought us closer together in some ways and, of course, added a layer of pressure.”

Still, he said, the attention “is something that we signed up for, and I would do it over again because of all the good we were able to do.”

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Kitchen said that includes how they are handling their breakup, which comes after a trial separation. “I hope that people can see us as models for ways to honorably look at each other and realize, maybe this isn’t working for us in the way it once was, and have a mature and emotionally stable way of going about that unwinding,” he said.

What the couple is going through is not unique, Kitchen stressed.

“Divorce is incredibly common, whether you’re a gay person, a straight person, LDS, or nonMormon. I think it’s reality a lot of couples deal with. We’ve grown up a lot together and we have a different vision for how our futures will look. When we fought for marriage, we fought for the whole range of rights,” he said,

Asked if he was worried the split would be used to justify opposition to same-sex marriage, Kitchen said, “That’s not keeping me up at night. I’m not concerned. If anything it shows that we deal with the same things straight couples deal with and this is a reality.”

Bill Duncan, head of the Utah-based Marriage Law Foundation that opposes same-sex marriage, said he had no specific response to the divorce announcement.

“It was never about individual kinds of considerations, that we thought some kinds of marriages would be less likely to succeed than others. The principle we were trying to promote, and I still think is valid, is marriage is about more than adult desires,” Duncan said.

He said the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage across the country “makes every marriage somewhat an entirely personal issue,” rather than focusing on any broader societal interest in marriage, including as a “channel for adults who can create children.”

Kitchen and Sbeity own a Lebanese restaurant, Laziz Kitchen, dubbed “SLC’s Pop & Pop Restaurant” by Guy Fieri when he featured the eatery on the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” The Salt Lake City restaurant was in the news earlier this year when a gay pride flag hanging outside was damaged.

The pair, Kitchen said, will continue to run the restaurant as well as their food distribution business that started with sales of homemade hummus to friends and family from their first apartment together after meeting a decade ago, and later, at the downtown Salt Lake City farmer’s market.

“We see Laziz beyond a restaurant — it’s gathering space of acceptance, good food and love. We are proudly queer, we hire refugees, and we have an open arm policy to anyone that walks through our doors,” the restaurant’s website states.

Kitchen said the couple will keep supporting not only each other but also those they serve.

“We’ll continue to fight for LGBTQ rights and equality of all sorts in the community,” he said, “We’ll do that through the political process, standing up for those who are underrepresented, the minority in our community, as well as creating a space in our restaurant where people feel safe and welcome.”

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