Clela Rorex created a boomlet in same-sex marriages four decades ago when she served as Boulder county clerk and gave marriage licenses to six gay couples. This June, she will attend the Los Angeles Film Festival for the world premiere of “Limited Partnership,” a documentary about one of those couples.
“I never wished I’d done anything differently,” Rorex, 70, said from her Longmont home. “I thought it was the right thing to do, and now I know it was absolutely the right thing.”
In the long history of gay rights, this chapter is almost forgotten. It happened in 1975, just six years after the Stonewall riots that sparked the movement for gay rights.
Anthony Sullivan and Richard Adams, who’d been together 43 years before Adams’ death in 2012, were one of the first gay couples to marry in the United States. They became the first same-sex couple to sue the federal government for recognition of their marriage because, as a binational couple, they needed a green card for Sullivan, who is Australian.
They lost that battle, and Sullivan lived for years under the immigration radar, keeping a low profile. But this month, he announced that he’s again fighting for recognition of their marriage and for a green card.
“The world has changed, and we are no longer labeled as ‘psychopathic personalities’ and ‘mental defectives’ by the immigration law as we were back then,” said Sullivan, 72. “The government has an opportunity to do the right thing now.”
For Rorex, the upcoming film and the renewed legal battle triggers memories of how she made history, all those years ago, when two men turned up at her office asking for a marriage license.
She’d had the job only three months. The only reason she ran for it, she said, was because Democrats believed a woman could never win, and she was a newly minted feminist.
“My dad had been county clerk for Routt County. I’d worked a few summers for him, and I thought I knew some things, which I did not,” she recalled.
Neither she nor her friends were politically ambitious, she said, “but I was running around in my miniskirt and long hair, handing out Japanese origami brochures that attracted people. Much to my shock, I won.”
Three months into the job, David McCord and David Zamora of Colorado Springs showed up to ask for a marriage license. They told her they’d tried to get one in El Paso County but the county clerk said, “We don’t do that kind of thing here. Maybe you should go to Boulder.”
Boulder had made headlines in 1974 when its City Council passed Colorado’s first ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. That triggered such a furor that citizens demanded recalls of the politicians who sponsored the legislation, including Mayor Penfield Tate, who in 1971 was the first African-American elected to Boulder’s City Council.
Although Tate had received death threats and hate mails for his decision, Rorex forged ahead. She asked the district attorney’s office if same-sex marriages were legal and was told that nothing in the state’s marriage code prohibited such marriage.
So Rorex gave the men a marriage license, which swiftly made national headlines, and soon became fodder for Johnny Carson, who joked about the crazy state of Colorado on his late-night talk show.
Sullivan and Adams happened to be watching Johnny Carson that night and immediately decided to fly out and get a marriage license.
“We loved each other and wanted to stay together,” said Sullivan.
They’d met in 1971 at a Los Angeles gay bar called “The Closet.” Sullivan, an Australian who was touring around the world, fell in love and overstayed his visa.
After getting their marriage license from Rorex, they had a wedding at the First Unitarian Church in Denver with ministers from the Metropolitan Community Church, which supported gay rights.
The New York Times covered their wedding in a story that called Colorado “a mini-Nevada for homosexual couples.”
Rorex didn’t stop giving out same-sex marriage licenses until Attorney General J.D. MacFarlane delivered a legal opinion that such marriages were not legal, and she was told to stop.
Some people demanded a recall, and she eventually resigned.
“The local Democratic party in Boulder was very angry and upset with me,” she said. “I got so much hate mail and phone calls. Churches said I was creating a Sodom and Gomorrah. (One newspaper) said that this would bring down property values, that there would be a rush of people and we’d turn into San Francisco.”
She never knew what happened to Sullivan and Adams until a few years ago, when the director of the documentary called to ask her to participate. She flew to California and met them.
“That was huge for me,” she said. “Actually getting to interact with one of those couples made me very glad. It brought things full circle for me, that I wasn’t acting stupid or recklessly then, but from what I thought was right, and obviously it was right.”
She hopes Sullivan finally receives his green card
. Sullivan’s lawyer, Lavi Soloway, thinks there’s a good chance.
“I’m optimistic that the government will treat Tony the same way it treats any other surviving spouse of a U.S. citizen,” he said.
Rorex, who became close to Sullivan and Adams, even attended Adams’ funeral in December 2012, meeting his friends and family.
“I don’t think she realized at the time what a courageous person she was,” said Sullivan. “I have a great deal of gratitude toward her, because without her doing that, there may not be the marriage equality there is now.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or twitter.com/coconnordp
