Pride Month: The State Of LGBTQ+ Protection In Colorado

COLORADO — Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the nation has brought a sense of urgency to June Pride Month in Colorado, which kicked off Wednesday and is set to run until June 30.

Pride Month honors Manhattan's 1969 Stonewall Uprising, a watershed moment for gay rights that included five days of riots after police raided the Stonewall Inn. Homosexual acts were illegal in every state but Illinois at the time, and bars and restaurants could be shut down just by having a gay employee or serving a gay patron.

Many celebrations, events and workshops are set to be held throughout Colorado in June — the advocacy organization One Colorado offers a calendar of events here.

The uneasiness hanging over this year’s celebration stems from a wave of legislation ranging from “don’t say gay” laws — prohibiting public schools from using curriculums addressing gender identity and sexual orientation, introduced in 20 states and now law in Florida and Alabama — to trans athlete sports bans in 15 states.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, legislation targeting transgender and nonbinary people also bars or criminalizes health care for transgender youth; prohibits transgender persons from using facilities, such as restrooms, corresponding with their gender identity; allows religiously motivated discrimination against transgender people; and makes it more difficult to get identification documents with their name and gender.

In Colorado, LGBTQ+ rights have been strengthened over the past few years, but 2020 in particular was an important year for advancements in our state. Legislation such as Senate Bill 166, signed by Gov. Jared Polis in 2020, simplified requirements to help transgender people receive new birth certificates. Another bill — also signed by Polis in 2020 — helped those with HIV in Colorado gain easier access to important medications. And Senate Bill 221 — which bans a legal strategy that cites a victim's sexual orientation or gender identity as the reason for a defendant's violent reaction — also passed the same year.

On LGBTQ+ policy, Colorado got a rating of 'high' from the Movement Advancement Project, or MAP, an independent, nonprofit think tank that researches equality legislation.

That analysis looks at laws and policies that help drive equality for LGBTQ+ people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the five populated territories. The major areas represented in the policy tally covered relationship and parental recognition, nondiscrimination, religious exemptions, LGBTQ+ youth, health care, criminal justice and identity documents.

Groups such as One Colorado say progress has been made, but that our state still has a long way to go.

Nadine Bridges, the organization's executive director, said that celebrating June Pride Month "is more than just sweeping up, when the weekend is over."

"It is the opportunity to lay out more footprints to continue the rebellion and sustain the civil disobedience," Bridges said in a statement.

"In a time when there are folks who want to remove our joy and squash our voices, we choose to rise up, march in the streets and be visible. We choose to express ourselves in the ways we see fit and not be constrained by forced expectations," Bridges' statement read, in part.

"We choose to dance with our friends, family, and partners, without inhibition. We choose to fight like hell so that our young and old will have a foundation to thrive in a world that can be harmful. So, in whatever way you choose to celebrate and rebel, our message is that we deserve to always be seen and heard, and we will not let hatred stop us."

LGBTQ+ advocates’ concern stems not only from what has happened in statehouses, but also the very real concern that a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court could return the issue of same-sex marriage to states to decide, just as the court’s majority is expected to do with abortion rights, according to a leaked Supreme Court opinion draft of the decision expected later this month or next.

Legal experts are divided on whether the Supreme Court’s watershed ruling legalizing same-sex marriage is in jeopardy with the expected ruling striking down constitutional protections on a woman’s right to an abortion.

University of Texas law professor Elizabeth Sepper, an expert on health care law and religion, told Reuters that Americans are right to worry.

“The low-hanging fruit is contraception, probably starting with emergency contraception, and same-sex marriage is also low-hanging fruit in that it was very recently recognized by the Supreme Court,” Sepper said.

In his dissent of Obergefell v. Hodges, the case at the center of the 2015 same-sex marriage ruling, Justice Samuel Alito used language similar to that in the leaked draft on abortion.

In his same-sex marriage dissent and the leaked opinion draft, Alito mentioned neither right is guaranteed in the Constitution and both issues should be left to states to decide, Jordan Woods, faculty director of the LGBTQ Law & Policy Program at the University of Arkansas, told The Washington Post.

Opponents of same-sex marriage could use Alito’s logic in attempts to overturn Obergefell, Woods said, noting that judges dissenting against a 2003 opinion striking down the Texas sodomy ban relied on similar reasoning.

“Ultimately, what the court will do, nobody knows,” Woods said. But Alito’s “draft absolutely provides a blueprint for the court essentially eroding or even overturning important constitutional precedents that are in this area of privacy that clearly this draft opinion is hostile towards.”

Katie Eyer, a professor specializing in anti-discrimination law at Rutgers University, told The Post she doubts there’s much appetite even in conservative states to begin the appeal process. Although divisions exist, about 61 percent of Americans strongly favor same-sex marriage, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center poll.

For his part, Alito tempered those concerns, asserting in the draft majority opinion on abortion leaked to Politico that his reasoning was not intended to apply to any right beyond abortion.

“We emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right,” wrote Alito, who was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

Yale Law School professor Douglas NeJaime, who has expertise in sexuality and constitutional law, told The Post that the precedents in Roe v. Wade — the 1973 case that affirmed a woman’s right to an abortion — the Obergefell same-sex decision and the Texas sodomy ban are “fundamentally different.”

“I think the draft opinion is actually trying to say Obergefell is not a target,” NeJaime said. “And I don’t know that that’s true, but it’s at least saying that.”