DENVER (AP) — Dozens more gay couples received marriage
licenses in Colorado on Friday as a third county began granting them in
the midst of a legal fight to resolve the issue for good.
Pueblo
County, the latest in the state to give marriage licenses to gay
couples, had served 25 couples by the end of the day, including two
people from Mississippi who heard the news while traveling through
Colorado and decided to get a license, Clerk Gilbert Ortiz said.
Pueblo
joined Boulder County and Denver in allowing gay couples to marry, one
day after a state judge ruled Thursday that the Boulder clerk can
continue issuing licenses.
Some couples exchanged vows outside the clerk’s office, while others took them home to hold a ceremony
later.
Colorado’s
2006 voter-approved gay marriage ban remains on the books. But state
District Judge Andrew Hartman said it is "hanging on by a thread"
following rulings by another state court and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals.
In Denver, Clerk Debra Johnson began granting
gay-marriage licenses Thursday, shortly after Hartman’s ruling. The
county has granted more than 50 licenses to gay couples.
Colorado
Attorney General John Suthers had sought to block the issuing of
licenses, warning of "legal chaos." In a statement Thursday, he pledged
to go to the state Supreme Court as soon as possible "to prevent a legal
patchwork quilt from forming."
In Boulder County, 12 more gay
couples got licenses Friday, bringing the total to 135 since the county
clerk started issuing licenses two weeks ago. That’s when the appeals
court panel found Utah’s gay marriage ban unconstitutional.
The
ruling became law in all six states covered by the 10th Circuit —
including Colorado — but the panel immediately put it on hold while Utah
appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, District Judge
C. Scott Crabtree struck down Colorado’s ban, joining multiple other
judges who have done the same in other states. Crabtree also placed his
ruling on hold while the legal battle plays out.
Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper has asked Suthers, a Republican, not to appeal.
"The decision on marriage by Judge Crabtree puts Colorado on the right side of history,"
Hickenlooper said.
In
the Boulder case, Hartman found that issuing marriage licenses was
harmless and an acceptable form of civil disobedience. But he required
that all couples be warned their marriage could lack legal value if a
court later upholds Colorado’s ban.
His decision left clerks around the state trying to figure out what to do.
Mesa
County Clerk Sheila Reiner noted that clerks must weigh the risk of
issuing licenses that might become invalid with violating people’s
rights by declining to do so.
"It’s sort of a rock and a hard place," she said.
Ortiz
said he read all three of the rulings affecting Colorado, but the
Boulder ruling persuaded him to issue the licenses, especially its
reference to St. Augustine’s belief that an unjust law is no law at all.
"The
scale of justice started leaning toward individual rights for me," said
Ortiz, who married his friends Bob Hudson and Mike Lawson.
Same-sex marriage is legal in 19 states and the District of Columbia, but it’s in limbo in much of the
rest of the nation.
There
is no guarantee the nation’s highest court will take the case when it
returns in October. But situations like the one in Colorado add to the
pressure for a final, definitive ruling on gay marriage in the U.S.
___
Follow Sadie Gurman at https://twitter.com/sgurman and Colleen Slevin
at https://twitter.com/colleenslevin .
Associated Press writers Dan Elliott in Boulder and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this
report.