FIVE ARRESTS AT MARRIAGE EQUALITY CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IN DENVER

No more “business as usual” says one participant…

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Soulforce in Colorado Press Release: May 27, 2009
For Immediate Release

Contact(s):
Kate Burns, Soulforce Denver Co-Founder, kateburns303@comcast.net, 303-806-8444
Christopher Hubble, Soulforce in Colorado Lead Organizer, cahubble08@gmail.com, 303-800-5664,

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Video of the event can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpsIPMdvHfA

(Denver, CO) –—Tuesday afternoon, approximately 100 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Coloradans protested outside Denver’s Wellington E. Webb Municipal Building. At 3:45 pm, several couples and individuals entered the Denver City and County Clerk and Recorder’s office to stage a sit-in and nonviolent civil disobedience. Denver residents Kate Burns, Lewis Thompson, Laurin Foxworth, John Ferguson, and Shari Wilkins were arrested at approximately 4:45 pm after refusing final warnings to disperse by the Denver Police Department. All were jailed and cited for trespassing and for disobedience of a lawful order. Burns was also cited for interference. Just over six hours later, they had all been released after each posted $500 bonds.

The event was in part a response to the “horrifying” ruling by the California Supreme Court upholding Proposition 8 earlier in the day, but was also an effort to remind the public that LGBT Coloradans are still denied equal protection in matters governed by civil law. Burns described the group’s intentions: “We will walk… together in solidarity. We will stand in front of the marriage license office counters to block business as usual, because business as usual should not proceed when every citizen, every tax-paying citizen, who walks into that public office does not receive the same services, benefits and rights. That’s what we’ll be doing”.

The protesters outside the Webb Municipal Building and the group engaging in civil disobedience inside the clerk and recorder’s office were also responding to a national call for social change through the ongoing use of nonviolent direct action until the federal government extends equal protection in all fifty states on matters governed by civil law, including marriage equality for same-gender couples. Soulforce, a national LGBT civil rights organization, recently played an instrumental role in launching www.nonviolence4equality.org, a new website designed to provide local grassroots organizers the valuable tools they need train their communities in nonviolent direct action.

The irony of yesterday’s event was not lost on organizers. Christopher Hubble, Soulforce in Colorado Lead Organizer, said, “Denver’s former Mayor Wellington E. Webb was and is one of the fiercest advocates that Colorado’s LGBT community has ever known, first introducing LGBT civil rights bills in the Colorado legislature in the 1970s and then during the 1990s inaugurating a period of remarkable social tolerance of LGBT people uncommon in most western states. Placing his daughter, Denver’s Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O’Malley, in the difficult position of effectively having to send us to jail for stopping business in the office she administers has not been easy. But we feel an obligation and a determination to confront the unjust laws which deny LGBT people equal protection in the State of Colorado.”


Soulforce is a national civil rights and social justice organization. Soulforce in Colorado is a local network of organizers of the national organization. Our vision is “freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance”. For more information go to www.soulforce.org.

Decision Day Civil Disobedience Participants:

Kate Burns is a Colorado native who works at the University of Denver. She and her partner, Sheila Schroeder, were arrested in 2007 after peacefully sitting in when they were denied a marriage license at the Denver Clerk and Recorder’s Office. Kate returns to that same public office today for the same reasons she did two years ago—to demand that all citizens share equal civil rights and all loving couples have the choice to marry in the United States.

Lewis Thompson, 63, and Laurin Foxworth, 83, have lived together as a couple for ten years and were married in London, Ontario, in November of 2003.“We are picketing and committing civil disobedience today in protest of the failure of our government, both state and federal, to allow us to marry, in consequence of which, the death of one of us means that the other will lose not only his spouse but also his home. After a combined 83 years of paying into Social Security and 55 years of working and paying toward our pensions, we are denied the right to leave a survivor benefit to our spouse.”

John Ferguson is a 66 year old white gay man who has lived in West Washington Park with his partner Gary for 24 years. After a long career with Hewlett Packard John has worked as a consultant for multiculturalism and an activist for the rights of marginalized people for the last ten years, to help dominant culture people appreciate what they have to gain by giving up the narrow confines and fears of privilege. John has two adult children and two beautiful grandchildren.

Shari Wilkins:Is a third generation Colorado native who grew up in centralDenver and then taught around the state of Colorado. I have known I was a lesbian since junior high school. A 33 year career educator—teacher, librarian, school principal and a director of Human Resources Director—Shari is now retired, and doesvolunteer work on behalf of the GLBT community in the state of Colorado through Project Visibility, the GLBT Center, working with Jewish Family Services, PFLAG, Project Angel Heart,and the Alzheimer's Association. Shari and her partner, Deborah MacNair, have been in a committed relationship for 25 years. “Legal marriage would be frosting on the cake for us. Because we apply for marriage licenses in a government office,I have always seen marriage as a civil and legal issue.I believeit is constitutionally inappropriate to deny equal access to all rights afforded by the act of civil marriage to GLBT couples seeking to marry. As a student of the philosophies of Gandhi and Buddha, I believe we have a responsibility to act in nonviolent ways to promote the rights ofour non-traditional families.”