Earlier this month, two citizens filed two ballot measures in Colorado to undermine marriage equality. The first ballot measure would defy the Supreme Court's recent marriage equality decision Obergefell v. Hodges, by denying same-sex couples the right to marry and instead allowing them only the right to obtain civil unions. The second would allow wedding related businesses to refuse to serve same sex-couples and instead hire a contractor to serve these couples.
We, of course, oppose both of these measures., which target same-sex couples for discriminatory treatment. One would deny them the fundamental right to get married. The other assists businesses to discriminate against them. Not only are these ballot measures constitutionally suspect, they are mean-spirited.
The proposed measures still have a long way to go before they can appear on the 2016 ballot. The promoters of each measure would need to obtain at least 98,492 verified signatures in support from registered voters, jump through several other procedural hurdles, and survive the inevitable (and justified) lawsuits brought by civil rights organization. We will continue to monitor the progress of these ballot measures.