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October 07, 2014 01:51 PM UTC

Gardner Clams Up As Same-Sex Marriages Resume

  • 51 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Good for the economy, too.
Good for the economy, too.

As the Denver Post's Jesse Paul reports, same-sex marriages are taking places across Colorado today as the last remaining stays against county clerks are vacated. After years of political battles, lost elections, and in the end anticlimactic court decisions responding to public opinion that has shifted dramatically, marriage equality is the law in Colorado:

Douglas County started issuing same-sex marriage licenses at 8 a.m. on Tuesday…

In Jefferson County, the first same-sex licence was issued at about noon, and Clerk and Recorder Pam Anderson said it was "pretty exciting."

Anderson expects a similar number of same-sex marriage licenses as civil unions. The county has issued 241 civil unions.

The licenses are being issued in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Monday to deny appeals against laws allowing same-sex marriage and a subsequent proclamation that the marriages will now be legal in Colorado.

9NEWS has more from Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson, a Republican:

"I believe strongly in individual rights," the Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder Pam Anderson said. "I personally support marriage equality, and I am proud to be part of this historic day."

Rep. Cory Gardner (R).
Rep. Cory Gardner (R).

Polling shows that Colorado voters are strongly in favor of marriage equality today–61% in favor to only 33% opposed. That's a sea change from the electorate's mood in 2006, when a gay marriage ban was passed in Colorado and even civil unions failed a popular vote. In the past eight years, the issue has evolved right out from under Colorado Republicans–to the extent that the GOP House majority's shenanigans in 2012 to stop a civil unions bill from passing the legislature playing a significant role in Democrats retaking that chamber in November.

And it's another moment where GOP Senate candidate Cory Gardner's long record is now a liability. As a state representative, Gardner voted against joint custody for same-sex couples in adoption cases. In Congress, Gardner voted against funding to implement the repeal of the military's hated "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. At the same time, Gardner's long string of flip-flops in this campaign is a major liability all by itself. And with the press now paying critical attention to what he says, it's an increasingly dangerous ploy.

With all of that in mind, what is Gardner supposed to say about same-sex marriage? Answer, as FOX 31's Eli Stokols reports: as little as possible.

"My views on marriage have long been clear," Gardner said to FOX31 Denver. [Pols emphasis] "I believe we must treat each other with dignity and respect. This issue is in the hands of the courts and we must honor their legal decisions.

"While others might seek to divide Coloradans, I will not do that. Coloradans are tired of politicians who spend all their time on partisan hot-button issues that divide our state…"

The problem with that, of course, is that Democrats didn't force the Supreme Court to take this action. Before Republicans found themselves on the wrong side of public opinion, Gardner was more than happy to campaign against, and vote against, the very same equal rights for gay and lesbian citizens that the Supreme Court has upheld and much of the state is celebrating today. The fact is, this is an issue both sides have spent a great deal of time and effort on–LGBT Coloradans and Democratic allies in support, Gardner and Republicans opposed.

The only difference today is that Gardner's side lost.

Comments

51 thoughts on “Gardner Clams Up As Same-Sex Marriages Resume

  1. I'm so relieved to hear that this weasel-faced porcupine doesn't want to use "hot-button issues" to "divide our state."

    Cuz, you know, otherwise, that looks and sounds precisely like what he's actually been doing up until now…

  2. Wow.  Kudos to Pam Anderson, who as she was expressing her support of marriage equality, was simultaneously writing her own political obituary in the Republican Party.

     

      1. She is still in the very slim minority within her own party in JeffCo.  Look no further than the folks on the JeffCo school board, Libby Szabo and Laura Woods…they are far more indicative of the pulse of JeffCo Republicans than Anderson.  Sure, if she decides she wants to run for something again in 20-30 years, she might have a shot.  She is dead in the water for the immediate future though.

    1. I think she timed her change just right.  She's got four years before facing another primary for county-wide office in Jeffco, assuming she runs for another county-wide office.  She gambling that by then, the number of libertarian conservatives combined with old school RINOs will outweigh the religious nuts in the GOP.  

      It's a gamble for her; just ask Mario Nicolais and Lang Sias, but I think she wants to put herself on the winning side in a general election in the premier Bellweather County of Colorado.

  3. The tyranny of the majority does not make right. There are still many believers in traditional marriage in this state, and we will all vote. This will not affect our votes.

    1. Just as there were people in the south who believed in the tradition of racially-segregated drinking fountains too.  Tell us Moddy, are you an alumni of Bob Jones University?

    2. Who will you vote for, Modster? Gardner isn't going to fight on for traditional marriage. You've been had by cynical pols using social conservative Christian hot button issues to raise funds and get you to vote for them against your own economic interests. Now that marriage equality is pretty much a done deal, you'll find your beloved Republican pols running state wide in purple states and in competitive districts reacting the same way Gardner is. With a shrug and a "whatever". That's how much they truly care about this stuff.  

      The whole gays, guns and God thing was never anything but manipulation of a base they needed to win.  They've got you so well trained, they know you'll vote for them now regardless (what are you going to do? Vote for a centrist Dem now that you're all nicely brainwashed into thinking all Dems are evil socialist freedom haters? Not likely) and they want to reach out to the rational middle so what they're telling you now is ……. never mind.

      1. Until the courts see reason, I will vote for candidates who respect traditional values. It's not my only issue, and fortunately the candidates who vote my way on social policy are also free market conservatives. I am an economics voter first and foremost. If the Democrats want my vote, they have to do things I agree with. And so far in my life, you haven't.

        1. "Until the courts see reason"  You mean until the courts substitute your faith for reason, right?  Reason dictates that all people similarly situated should have identical rights.  Reason dictates that limiting membership into a societally preferred status should occur only when demonstrable proof exists that such advantage provides a positive benefit to society.  Reason dictates that we change our understanding of the world in light of evidence not previously known.

          I'm perfectly fine with you holding onto ideas which I find objectionable as a matter of personal belief, but stop trying to conflate that faith with reason.  Faith requires belief in the absence of or in contradiction to available evidence.  Reason can only be attained though an understanding of existing evidence.

          1. I think the courts saw reason last spring and summer.  The Fat Lady sang yesterday morning in D.C.  I find it laughable that Moddy is lamenting the courts' failure to see reason.  It takes four justices to grant cert.  Five of the nine were appointed by those flaming liberal presidents, Reagan, Daddy Bush and Shrub.  They couldn't even get four of those five to take the cases and reverse the Circuit Courts of Appeals.   

            We saw reason on display yesterday morning……

          2. That's just not true. Marriage has tax benefits that are specifically meant to benefit families either with children or planning to have children. MOST homosexual relationships do not produce children (obviously), so why should they get those tax benefits?

            This is not just about right and wrong, there are financial fairness questions. Marriage has existed throughout history for a biological and social purpose, not just to feel good.

            1. Look you incompetent fool: What about home ownership? visitation rights? This isn't about "just feeling good". This is about equality and fairness. By the way, jackass, gay people adopt all the time. Children are an important part of many gay families. Ask Jarid Polis or Mark Ferandino how they feel about their "non produced" children.

            2. Wrong, as usual, Thing2. 17% – 31% of same-sex couples are raising kids. So there are those issues of providing stability and social acceptance for the children.

              Then there are those other financial issues, as denverco brings up^^^. My friend R bought a house with his same-sex partner. He didn't have his name on the mortgage. When his partner died, R lost about $30,000 investment, AND was shut out of the will, unlike an opposite-sex married partner would be.

            3. Moddy, you're a miserable, backwards bigot.  It's got to be killing you that you and your ilk are running out of people to discriminate against.  Maybe you'll get lucky, and some space aliens will land and give you some new beings to hate on.  Everyone else is gettin' all uppity and gettin' rights, and stuff.   Sheesh. 

            4. To the extent that any social policy seeks to advantage children in a marriage, it does so to promote or support child rearing, not child birthing.  Unfortunately for you, studies show that this happens just as well with Adam and Steve as Adam and Eve.

              As for "financial fairness," many straight couples will not or cannot have children and nobody has been screaming about the unfairness of giving them status advantages.  While there are biological reasons for pair bonding and certainly sociological reasons for marriage, all that I am aware of apply equally to dudes and chicks in whatever combination they choose for coupling.

              You just don't want this.  Sorry, but a majority of us do.  You think your God doesn't want this.  Sorry, but a majority of our gods do. (atheists sold separately)

            5. So should seniors who can't have children be banned from marrying and enjoying those benefits? How about people who, for one reason or another can't have biological children? How about the fact that the whole child based argument is a crock because any couple, gay or straight, fertile or not, can have children if they want to via adoption, surrogates and other means? And many gay couples choose to. In fact, in this day and age, many couples, both gay and straight, seek legal marriage only when they want to start families or commit to the families they've already started. 

            6. Marriage is a religious sacrament and a financial contract.  Your particular religion may not recognize it as it may be legally defined.  Times change.  Move on.  You have no legal argument, just a cultural one.  Not everyone shares your cultural beliefs.  I recommend you not marry a same sex person.  You may break in hives.  Just give people a break.  It really doesn't affect you personally, and society benefits in the added stability.  Trust me, pumpkin.  It will be all right.

        2. And what makes you think Gardner has any special respect for what you judge to be the correct traditional values? He's certainly not offering to fight this one to the death for you despite the court decisions. In what concrete way does voting for the Republicans who are now shrugging the whole issue off help you on traditional values? 

          And let's be clear. You 're right to your traditional values is entirely unaffected. You can be as dead set against gay marriage for yourself as you want to be. Nobody will ever make you marry a person of the same sex. You can belong to a church that doesn't recognize gay marriage and the clergy of that church will never be forced to perform one. The fact that gays and lesbians can marry doesn't take away from the marriages of heterosexuals. My heterosexual marriage is just the same as it was before. This is entirely about imposing what you judge to be right according to your religious views on others. That's all it is.  

          So you can go on voting for Rs like Gardner against your own economic interests but don't kid yourself that they ever cared about your values for any reason other than raising funds and getting votes.  

    3. It is not your belief in traditional marriage that causes controversy, it is your insistence on enshrining your personal religious beliefs in laws we must all follow that is the problem.  Allowing only traditional marriage does nothing to advance the public good, and does do a great deal of harm. 

      In some places making a religious code of beliefs and practices the law of the land is called sharia law, in others it is Christian dominionism and reconstructionism.  Why you want to enforce your own brand of belief on the general public, I have no idea.  But you are losing the culture wars, because this isn't the 19th century.   Your particular religious laws are not welcome in the public square. 

          1. Answer progressicats' question, Moderatus..I am genuinely interested in your honest answer to that question…How have you been harmed?  In what way are you impacted personally..?

        1. What part of Hobby Lobby do you interpret as demonstrating that religious freedom is under attack?  For fuck's sake, corporations now have religious rights.

        2. Bull.  Nobody's religious freedom is under attack. You are perfectly free to believe or not as you please and worship or not as you please. So is everyone else and everyone else is free from having your religious views imposed on them.

        3. Let me clarify, immoderatus.  Your religious beliefs are not welcome to rule the public square.  This nation was founded on secular values rooted in the Enlightenment.  Apparently, you don't approve of the Enlightenment or its values.  Fair enough.

          1. They don't believe that the constitution is sexular.  Have you ever seen the site which shows the Tea Party version of the constitutional convention?  (I used to have the link to it.)  There was Jefferson, Madison and Jesus writing the constitution.

            Then again,their timeline is a little screwy.  These are the same folks who sincerely believe that dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth at the same time when God finished his handiwork 65,000 years ago.

        4. My religion will only marry single, never divorced, opposite gender adults.

          I'm guessing yours too.

          Allowing gay marriage, somewhere else by someone else, doesn't affect our religious freedom at all. It does, however, increase the freedom of others.  Why do you oppose their freedom?

           

          There is nothing in your religious freedom that says you have to be free from observing or being made aware that others are sinning. Get over yourself.

    4. "The tyranny of the majority does not make right..,….."  I believe it was the "tyranny of the majority" that placed an amendment banning same sex marriage into the state constitution in the first place. Given that the opposition to same sex marriage has come primarily from religious groups, said ban was in direct violation of Section 4 of the Colorado Constitution that discusses religious freedom. If you don't think such bans were religiously motivated, then you haven't paid attention to the rabid, foaming-at-mouth, press releases coming from some of the religious right groups since the Supreme Court declined to take up the issue.

      The other issue that fouled up opponents of same sex marriage is even more simple. No one could ever prove harm to their own rights to heterosexual marriage. No one forbade then, or forbids now, straight people from getting married to the opposite sex partner of their choice.

      Yesterday was a great day for true religious liberty (and, no, I'm not gay).

      Regards,   C.H.B.

      1. The tyranny of the majority is exactly what the ban on our government either endorsing or suppressing belief protects us from. We are a majority Christian nation but,  thanks to our constitution, Christians can't impose their beliefs on the minority, even if all of them could agree on exactly what those beliefs are.

    5. By all means, vote.  There are still many members of the KKK that retain their right in spite of the "war of northern aggression", so you'll have company.

    6. My Bible references at least five types of marriage as legitimate.

      Man, woman

      Man, wife and all of her slaves

      Man, multiple wives

      Man, wife,all of his concubines

      Rapist and his victim.

       

      Which tradition are you referring to?

  4. With the SC "non"-ruling on gay marriage–I may have gone deaf. I haven't heard any comments from the Archbishop of Denver, Samuel J. Aquila about gay marriage.

    He came to Denver and started out by slamming gay marriage, etc., and so far I have heard nothing from him.

    Has anybody?  

      1. It is a venerable tradition.  Portraits from the earlier Europeans depict marrying couples with very pregnant brides.  When will the hysterical Calvinists and pseudo  Puritans just fade away?  This whole thing is getting boring, really boring.  The sixties happened for a reason. Why can't they move on, just hang with their own like minds, and not try to be so controlling of the rest of us?  

        Any one who can captivate George like this deserves accolades.  I toast them both.

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