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Coloradans could
vote on four competing gay rights measures

Coloradans could
vote on four competing gay rights measures

Coloradans could be voting on as many as four ballot measures dealing with gay rights this November.

Coloradans could be voting on as many as four ballot measures dealing with gay rights this November. Two would support gay couples, and two would oppose them.

According to Denver's Rocky Mountain News, the gay rights group Coloradans for Fairness and Equality this week filed paperwork for a November ballot initiative that says "domestic partnerships" between gay couples are not similar to marriage. They are attempting to counter a ballot measure sponsored by Will Perkins, author of ill-fated antigay Amendment 2 in 1992, and Rep. Kevin Lundberg that would prohibit the state from creating any legal status similar to marriage for same-sex couples.

Both measures have to attract about 68,000 valid voter signatures to make the ballot, as does a proposed state constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. A proposal establishing domestic partnerships for gay couples is working its way through the legislature. If it passes, it also would be on the ballot.

The gay rights group opposes the marriage amendment. But it is the proposal to prohibit any legal recognition of gay relationships that has inspired its latest effort. "We are very concerned that Will Perkins's aim is to reenact his denial of civil rights to same-sex couples," Sean Duffy, a spokesman for Coloradans for Fairness and Equality, told the RockyMountainNews. "We would hotly dispute the notion that domestic partnerships are the same as marriage."

It looks very much like something a court might have to decide should both measures pass. "You have a legal issue there," said Perkins, who was in Denver Tuesday for a meeting with Lundberg and the Colorado Legislative Council, which assists groups in wording ballot measures. "You can't have two things pass that say different things. People are going to have a choice to make, and we'll just have to wait and see."

In the past, if voters have approved two amendments that are in direct conflict with each other, the one with the greater number of votes has taken precedence. But it's not clear that the Coloradans for Fairness and Equality proposal contradicts the Perkins amendment. Rather, it attempts to exempt domestic partnerships from the reach of Perkins's measure by simply declaring that they are not similar to marriage and therefore not prohibited.

Perkins, a retired Colorado Springs auto dealer, spearheaded the campaign to pass Amendment 2, which prohibited laws that would protect gays from discrimination. That amendment never took effect and was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996, but not before it prompted a nationwide boycott of Colorado by groups sympathetic to gay rights. (The Advocate)

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