The story of marriage equality in Colorado is almost as old as the history of OUT FRONT itself. In fact, it predates us by a year and begins with the story of a Boulder County Clerk named Clela Rorex. According to the Washington Post, she was only in office one day before she was asked by gay couple Dave McCord and Dave Zamora if they could get married. Rorex could find nothing in the law that said she couldn’t and asked a county attorney, who couldn’t find anything either. “I didn’t even know anyone from the gay and lesbian community,” Rorex recalled in the Washington Post interview. “I had no exposure to homosexuals.” But, being a feminist herself, she was sensitive to discrimination and issued the license.
Rorex’s decision to issue same-sex marriage licenses stirred up a storm of controversy in the state and beyond. In one of the most infamous stories about the licensing situation, reported on in the Washington Post article, there was one day when a man showed up with a horse trailer and a group of reporters and asked Rorex, “If a man can marry a man and a woman can marry a woman, why can’t a tired old cowboy marry his best friend?” The best friend the man had in mind was a horse, in an obvious attempt to discredit same-sex marriage licenses. Rorex was quick on her feet, though, as she asked the man for his horse’s age and, when the man said the horse was 8 years old, Rorex told him that he could not marry someone underage.
According to a 1977 OUT FRONT article, Colorado Attorney General J.D. MacFarlane issued a formal legal opinion that other laws made same-sex marriages invalid and ordered Rorex to stop issuing licenses to gay couples, which she did. Then in January of 1977, in an 8-2 decision, the Colorado House State Affairs Committee approved a bill which would outlaw same-sex marriages in the state in an attempt to prevent this situation from happening again. Voting against the bill were Rep. Jack McCrosky (D-Denver) and Rep. Lee Jones (R-Boulder), although two other people raised objections to the bill before voting for it anyway. Jones, the lone Republican dissenter, said in an interview afterwards “I think they should be given marriage licenses if it makes them feel better. And for that matter, I think they should have valid marriages, too.”
OUT FRONT was at the forefront of the issue, even back then, with a March 1977 editorial from OUT FRONT writer Penni Kimmel offering a scathing rebuke of the newly established law. “The legislating of life styles (sic) is a massively dangerous procedure,” wrote Kimmel, “not least when it goes against the preference of a large minority (gays) and an even larger grouping of people who wish to believe (1) that laws are made for the protection of people, (2) that all adult citizens are entitled to the rights and privileges guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, and (3) that the government in any form has no business in the home of a private citizen, much less his/her bedroom. Even less do legislators have the right to take a salary to waste their time considering such a proposal.”
But the licenses that Rorex issued remained controversial after Anthony Corbett Sullivan and Richard Frank Adams married in April of 1975 with one of the licenses that Rorex issued. According to the Washington Post, Sullivan, an Australian citizen, was facing deportation and, after Adams attempted to inform officials of his marriage in an attempt to keep Sullivan from being deported, they received an infamous denial letter stating: “You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.” Their subsequent lawsuit to keep Sullivan in the country, called Adams v Howerton, became the first case asking a federal court to recognize a same-sex marriage.
Although a decision was handed down in 1982 from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that stated that Congress was in charge of laws regarding marriage and that there was no intention of redefining the definition of marriage beyond heterosexual marriage, Sullivan and Adams continued to fight, this time with Sullivan as the plaintiff in a petition to the Board of Immigration Appeals. According to an OUT FRONT report from August of 1984, the BIA made the absurd ruling that, “We do not find that the respondent’s separation from his ‘life partner’ will cause him hardship emotional otherwise sufficient to rise to the level of extreme hardship contemplated under the (Immigration and Nationality Act).” The couple fled to Europe and lived in Northern Ireland for a time, but eventually returned to the United States to live together secretly and illegally.
Attempts to ban same-sex marriage surfaced again in the mid-to-late ‘90s as bills were passed in both 1996 and 1997 to ban same-sex marriage in the state, with both being vetoed by then-Governor Roy Romer. Romer was hardly a champion for full marriage equality as, even though a 1997 AP story that we ran in OUT FRONT at the time said that Romer believed “there was a bit of gay bashing in it,” he still believed that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Romer said that he hoped that the legislature would find a procedure to recognize same-sex relationships, “but not in the same way as traditional marriage.” According to the official website for the Freedom to Marry campaign, a bill banning same-sex marriage was officially passed in 2000 and signed by the new governor Bill Owens. 
Opponents of marriage equality were unsatisfied, especially as they saw the tide starting to turn state-by-state towards acceptance of gay marriage, or at the very least partial recognition of same-sex relationships. In 1997, AP reported that Hawaii became the first state to extend some legal benefits to same-sex couples (albeit in an effort to thwart a full recognition of same-sex marriage). In 2000, according to the ACLU, Vermont became the first state to allow same-sex civil unions, specifically reserving the word “marriage” for straight couples but still offering a legally recognized partnership for same-sex couples. Then, in 2004, as NPR reports, Massachusetts became the first state to legally allow same-sex marriages.
In 2006, a ballot initiative was put to the Colorado voters to ban same-sex marriage in the state constitution, a measure that passed with 55% of the vote, according to Ballotpedia, enacting Amendment 43 which stated that “Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state,” thereby enshrining hateful language in the state’s most important legal document. At the same time, Referendum 1, a ballot measure that would have legalized domestic partnerships in Colorado, was defeated in the same election.
OUT FRONT not only covered Amendment 43 and Referendum 1, we were already prepared to give helpful advice to those grieving the political losses in the fight for equality. Our Therapist Advice column offered guidance from Jamey Collins, LCSW, who wrote, “We in the GLBT community, along with our allies, are in the process of dealing with the pain that accompanies our current disappointment. Now is the time to work through these feelings of anger, hurt and frustration—to take really good care of ourselves and to care for each other. We need to allow our pain to surface fully and be expressed so that we can move forward.”
Calhoun turned out to be correct as the momentum of the marriage equality movement was too strong to slow down and, in March 0f 2013, OUT FRONT got to run our triumphant cover story with then-Governor John Hickenlooper signing into law the Colorado Civil Union Act, making Colorado the 18th state in the United States to offer comprehensive relationship recognition to same-sex couples. “It is a moment the whole community has waited for, for so long,” said Hickenlooper right before signing the bill. “It’s the beginning of the country changing. A change has gotten here. And it’s going to keep going.”
“It’s amazing, the whole thing is just amazing,” said Steve Unfer, who had marched in Denver’s first Pride parade and was present at the 2013 bill signing with his partner, Rich Jaeger. “I never thought I would see this in my life.”
Of course, the celebration over the Colorado Civil Union Act was short-lived as two years later, in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court Case of Obergefell v. Hodges, declared that same-sex marriage was protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Obergefell instantly legalized same-sex marriage across the country, thereby overruling discriminatory state laws like the one passed by Colorado in 2000 and even state constitutional amendments like the one passed by Colorado in 2006.
You would think that the story of marriage equality in Colorado ends there, but remember that, even after Obergefell, the law banning same-sex marriage in Colorado, not to mention Amendment 43, still remained on the books, even if they were unenforceable. This was a problem for two reasons. The first is that it’s deeply insulting to have anti-LGBTQ+ language in the state’s constitution, even if it’s language that can’t be enforced. The other problem was that, as Politico reported, in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the legal right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson, thereby overturning the landmark 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, conservative Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his opinion that the court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” thus signaling a desire to overturn the landmark ruling on marriage equality, amongst other important civil rights cases.
Therefore, there was a fear amongst marriage equality experts that, if Obergefell were to be overturned, marriage rights would go back to being decided on a state-by-state basis. For these reasons, it was imperative for Colorado to act to protect the right of same-sex couples to marry.
As OUT FRONT had the pleasure of reporting on, in 2024 Amendment J was put to the voters to repeal the unenforceable language in Colorado law defining marriage as between one man and one woman, passing with over 63% of the vote. On April 7, 2025, Governor Jared Polis, the first openly gay man elected governor of a U.S. state, signed the Protecting the Freedom to Marry Act into law. “Colorado is for everyone, no matter who you are or who you love,” said Polis at the signing. “Last November, the voters got rid of outdated language in our constitution that banned same-sex marriage. This is a long overdue step in the right direction and today’s law I’m signing ensures that Coloradans can marry who they love in our Colorado for all.”
Looking back on the signing of the Protecting the Freedom to Marry Act in an interview with OFM for this article, Polis emphasizes the personal importance of the act to him and his own marriage. “Well, it was very exciting signing the law,” Polis recalls. “It really confirmed and validated, in our state, a right we already had under the Obergefell case. But it was important because I knew that Coloradans were standing up for marriages like mine, and it was really exciting to be able to sign a law that no matter what happens at the Supreme Court or the federal level, our marriage rights are protected, along with hundreds of 1000s of other same-sex couples in Colorado.”
Yet, even with the Freedom to Marry Act signed into law, there are still battles to be fought in the fight for true marriage equality. People with disabilities, for example, often risk a reduction or even total loss of their Supplemental Security Income (SSI) if they are to marry or even move in with a romantic partner. “If disabled people get married their income is pooled,” explains Z Williams, an activist who has been working on advocating for queer rights for 28 years, “meaning that they likely will not qualify for the life-saving services covered by Medicaid like medical care or assistance with daily essential care even if those are required to function. That makes marriage impossible.”
The legal benefits of marriage are currently limited to family structures that consist of only two adults, which some would argue leaves out non-traditional family structures that may look more complicated and involve adults who are chosen family, extended family, or intergenerational families living in one household.
A big step was taken for non-traditional family structures in January of 2026 when, according to Westword, Colorado removed an archaic state bigamy law that made it illegal to cohabitate with someone other than your spouse. In an interview with Westword, State Senator Nick Hinrichsen explained that the reason for removing the archaic language was to keep from criminalizing a partner moving on before their marriage has legally ended. “People move on,” says Hinrichsen. “One partner finds another partner, and they move in. Then they go to actually finalize the divorce later, and old feelings come back. That gets used against them.”
Still, while the law was primarily changed to decriminalize moving on from a marriage that has effectively ended, non-traditional and family structures were also taken into consideration when changing the law. Hinrichsen explains that, after the horrific hate crime shooting at Club Q in 2022, some victims were reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement or seek victim compensation for fear that their non-traditional household setup would expose them to potential prosecution.
Z Williams, who has been at the forefront of this issue as well, explains to Westword: “In a household with three people who lost wages or needed mental-health care, you essentially have to admit to law enforcement that you are breaking the law. Anytime you walk up and say, ‘Hi, I’m breaking the law,’ that puts you at risk of prosecution. Even the threat of that is enough to stop people from seeking help.” So this revises law reduces the fear of prosecution among Coloradans living in non-traditional family structures.
Some on the left, like Williams, are critical of the entire concept of marriage equality, arguing that it’s not something that the queer community should primarily be focusing on. “The fight for Marriage Equality was shaped largely by cisgender LGB folks concerned with property, taxes, and estates,” explains Williams in an interview for this article. “Of course equal protection is important, but we have to be honest that marriage did not change the material conditions for so many in our communities, especially trans folks.”
When the current political environment has put many of the freedoms, rights, and protections of LGBTQ+ Coloradans at risk, we are reminded that marriage equality is part of the fight, but it’s hardly the entire fight.
OUT FRONT Magazine is proud of the fact that we’ve been able to cover the fight for marriage equality for same-sex couples over the course of our history, and that we’ve seen the story of advocacy, resistance, and hope for a better future. But as we have seen, the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation continues. Whatever the next fight for equality in Colorado ends up looking like, OFM intends to be at the forefront of covering it.
All photos by Alissha R. and taken at Denver Pride 2026
Sponsored content: Funding Provided by Colorado Health Foundation
