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)