Committed to each other, committed to change: Couple sues for marriage equality in Colorado

Dr. Rebecca Brinkman and Margaret Burd walked into the office of the Adams County Clerk on October 30 and requested an application for a marriage license. The couple, who have been together for 34 years, met all of the requirements for a marriage license — with one notable exception.

“The clerk, a very nice young woman, told us that in Colorado two women could not get married,” Burd said. “She offered us a civil union application, and we said we weren’t interested in a civil union.”

Brinkman and Burd filed a lawsuit against Adams County the same day. The case seeks to overturn Amendment 43, Colorado’s voter-approved referendum that in 2006 defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

This is not the first time the couple has fought a Colorado amendment. Brinkman launched a phone banking campaign in 1992 when Amendment 2 was on the November ballot, a referendum that would have prevented municipalities from passing anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBT people.

“We worked quite diligently during that period,” Brinkman said. “We had a list of voters and we asked them how they were voting on Amendment 2. We did that for several weeks.”

“We also ran a campaign walking around the neighborhoods of Adams County,” Burd added. “So we were really running the volunteer efforts in this county. We go pretty far back with that.”

Though Amendment 2 passed, an injunction was filed and the amendment was overturned by the United States Supreme Court in 1996. Brinkman said the experience taught her and her partner that staying silent about their relationship was no longer an option. “It became clear at that point that in order to create any change, we had to be visible. We had to come out and let our neighbors know who we are.”

Burd and Brinkman first met each in Missouri as faculty members in the same school. “We were both teaching at this little school outside of Kansas City,” Burd said. “We were told to coach together, and out of that we became friends.”

The friendship quickly blossomed into a relationship. Their first year together, the couple biked from Oregon to Brinkman’s mom’s home in Missouri. “That kind of cemented the whole thing. We’ve been together since.”

Burd and Brinkman had their own private ceremony were they exchanged commitment rings with each other. “We went out on a long hike, and it was very purposeful and meaningful to us. Over the years we’ve upgraded to diamonds,” Brinkman joked. “We were poor teachers at the time.”

The couple has faced a number of challenges over the years as an unmarried couple. Ten years ago Brinkman ended up in the emergency room with a head injury. When she returned to the hospital a week later to remove the 35 stitches in her head, Brinkman was asked for her next of kin.

“I said it was right there in the paperwork. It’s Margaret. The woman asked who Margaret was, and I said she’s my partner. The woman replied, ‘No, no, no, we can’t have that. We need the name of a relative.’” Brinkman’s closest next of kin was her 80 year old deaf mother — who lived 600 miles away.

A hospital representative told Brinkman that she should have set up a power of attorney, a precaution she already took. “But that paperwork was in the basement, and I was bleeding profusely and I didn’t think I would need that kind of documentation.”

Though the passage of civil unions earlier this year resolved some of the legal issues LGBT couples face, Burd and Brinkman believe it’s not enough.

“I had mixed feelings about civil unions,” Brinkman said. “I really want to acknowledge the people who worked on that, and I’m really happy that they did that. But we don’t want to be a subset. Anytime in history when we’ve created separate but equal, it’s never equal.”

Brinkman runs her own chiropractic clinic, and stated many of her own clients are confused about the differences between civil unions and marriage. “Many, many straight patients have come into my office and said they read about our lawsuit in the newspaper. All of them said they thought we already had marriage rights.”

There are more than 1,100 federal benefits and protections afforded to married couples that couples in a civil union do not have access to, such as tax credits and social security benefits for surviving partners.

“Clearly the population at large does not understand the truth of diminished or abbreviated rights inherent in civil unions,” Brinkman said. “This is why Margaret and I have decided a legal challenge to Amendment 43 was the right choice for us, rather than trying to convince the mass of Colorado citizens to overturn the amendment in a later election cycle.”

Brinkman and Burd emphasized that their love and commitment to each other is no different from couples who are allowed to marry.

“We helped each other through the death of our parents. We helped each other through graduate school and the move out here [to Colorado],” Brinkman said. “We should be able to get married in the state of Colorado among our friends and family and make it truly the kind of affirming celebration that we think it is.”

The couple’s lawyer, Ralph Ogden of Wilcox & Ogden, P.C., explained the legal basis for the lawsuit. “Amendment 43 violates the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment. Colorado grants a right to be married to heterosexual couples and denies that right to gay couples.”

Ogden added that the same-sex marriage ban also denies LGBT couples the right to due process. “The government can’t do something that is utterly arbitrary and capricious, and I feel very strongly that Amendment 43 is an arbitrary and capricious treatment. It singles out a group of people for discrimination.”

Ogden is hoping for a district court decision by next summer. If appealed, it could take 12 to 18 months before the case reaches the Colorado Supreme Court.

“Be patient with the judicial process,” Ogden said. “This isn’t going to happen overnight, but I think we will prevail.”