Marriage Equality four decades early
When two men walked in asking for a marriage license, newly elected Boulder County Clerk Clela Rorex had just taken office. It was 1975. Colorado law at the time defined marriage using gender-neutral language. Rorex checked with the district attorney’s office, and when she found no law explicitly banning same-sex marriage licenses, she decided to issue one. Soon, couples from across the country began traveling to Boulder. Over several weeks, Rorex issued licenses to six same-sex couples before the state attorney general ordered her to stop. The marriages were not legally recognized, but the moment became one of the earliest actions by a government official in support of same-sex marriage in the United States -- forty years before nationwide legalization. When asked, Rorex said she did not see herself as making history. “Who was I,” she said, “to deny equal rights to someone else?”
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