Tag: onecolorado

For Colorado native Todd Garrity, the realization that his female anatomy did not match his knowledge that he was a boy struck the day...

No matter where I go, there’s something about my hair that screams, “Please offer me unsolicited feedback.” “Bieber wannabe.” “Mesbian (male lesbian).” “So retro!” I’ve heard it all.

Colorado U.S. Senator Mark Udall at a gay-rights event this weekend in Denver said he supports marriage equality for all Americans. Udall joins a growing list of lawmakers who have gone on record in support of ending the era where the federal Defense of Marriage Act and where constitutional bans like Colorado's Amendment 43 blocked LGBT couples from the legal protections and advantages provided by the state through marriage. Udall is the 18th sitting U.S. Senator to state publicly that he supports efforts to make gay marriage legal.

Survey results released by Public Policy Polling this week underline broad support in Colorado for some form of legislation that would grant gay couples equal partnership rights. Although Republican members of the House Judicial Committee last year quashed a popular civil unions bill, PPP found that even among Colorado Republican voters, support for civil unions-style legislation is now nearing 60 percent.

Colorado U.S. Senator Mark Udall is leading the fight for equal rights for gay Americans on Capitol Hill and on the video internet. He released a YouTube for gay rights organization One Colorado during gay pride week and is a major presence in the Senate contribution to the "It Gets Better" campaign aimed at gay kids teased or bullied at school.

A recent study of workplace discrimination against the LGBT community reveal that high numbers of the community are still discriminated against at their place of work.

Doug Linkhart is the survivor. He won the reality-TV-style alt-Denver Mayoral debate hosted last night by NewEra Colorado, OneColorado and Planned Parenthood-- the best candidate forum ever™. The Montclair-neighborhood Democrat, an at-large city councilman and former state representative and senator took a laid-back Linkhart approach to the event. He coasted through early rounds of questioning and shined at the end, espousing an updated version of a 1960s platform that would shift focus and resources from prisons to schools, turbocharge green energy development and implementation in the city and legalize pot.

Accepting the fact that electoral politics is as much entertainment as politics and that all entertainment must now include text-message voting, youth-voter organization NewEra Colorado is gathering Denver's mayoral candidates for a debate that will embrace our fully mediated reality-teevee era. Scheduled for Wednesday evening, the debate will subject candidates to Denver trivia questions in addition to more standard policy questions. The candidates will answer to live-audience member, video participants and a panel of experts. Denver Fox News reporter Eli Stokols will play the panel's Steven Tyler. Ellen Dumm of the Campaign for a Strong Colorado will play J-Lo.

During an emotional eight-hour hearing on same-sex civil unions at the capitol in Denver Thursday, a long list of witnesses on both sides of the issue told emotional stories of life as gay and transgender Americans. More than a few wept as they talked about shame, discrimination and systemic bias. Others quoting scripture warned of the end times the bill would surely hasten unto the Centennial State should it pass. The five committee Democrats took turns agreeing and disagreeing with witnesses, debating theology, Constitutional history and the horrors of the Jim Crow South and the Holocaust. The six members of the majority bloc Republicans on the committee, however, had little to say. They watched and listened and, without really elaborating their positions, voted as a bloc against sending the legislation to the full House for debate and a vote. They stone-cold killed the bill.

The coming debate in the Colorado House Judiciary Committee on same-sex civil unions bill SB 172 will center on Republican arguments for and against the legislation. The debate scheduled to take place under the Dome in Denver Thursday will underline the dynamics shaping the larger national debate on gay rights-- a debate that now pits Republicans against Republicans because Democrats and Independents have already made up their minds on the matter.