A proclamation in celebration of Denver’s 25 Years of National Trajectory for Equal Rights and LGBTQ Protection.
President. We do have one proclamation. Proclamation for 20. Really? For 20 oak anyway. Councilor has a. Woman. I just know. Does that councilwoman can age? Will you please read proclamation 420? Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. I proclamation 420 in celebration of Denver's 25 year history of nondiscrimination and equal rights for LGBTQ people. Whereas in 1973, Denver officially repealed ordinances used to criminalize homosexuality. And in the 1980s and nineties, society was beginning to see gay and lesbian individuals more visibly. But understanding was still limited and bias was still legally sanctioned, persistent. And many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people were still afraid to live openly for fear of violence, discrimination or other forms of non acceptance. And. Whereas, despite the antagonistic climate, Denver was a home and a regional destination for many LGBTQ persons with community institutions like the Center and Society providing support and advocacy and a number of accepting businesses serving the community. And. Whereas, local community leaders began appealing to the Denver City Council for Legal Protection from discrimination resulting in the Denver City Council adopting Ordinance 623 of 1990, a comprehensive civil rights urban ordinance that prohibited discrimination in employment, housing, education, health, welfare , public accommodations and commercial space on the basis of sexual orientation. And. Whereas, 25 years ago this month, opponents of LGBTQ equality responded with a ballot measure to repeal the protections for sexual orientation, which galvanized the LGBTQ community and allies to campaign to defeat the measure, resulting in 54.7% of Denver voters rejecting the backlash, affirming the legal right of their gay and lesbian family members, neighbors, friends and coworkers to live free of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in Denver. And. Whereas, opponents of LGBTQ equality who lost Denver's municipal vote then took their fight to the voters of the state of Colorado in a high profile loss for LGBTQ Equality Amendment two, which would have prohibited cities like Denver and Boulder from including sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination ordinances. And. Whereas, once again, 20 years ago this month, justice prevailed in a Supreme Court decision striking down Colorado's amendment to Romer v Evans, which was also cited by the Supreme Court in striking down state bans on same sex marriage in 2015. Obergefell versus Hodges decision, therefore paving the way both for nondiscrimination and relationship protections for couples. Whereas the city and county of Denver and our elected officials have routinely served as national leaders in the advancement of LGBTQ equality, including the creation of the first Mayor's LGBT Advisory Committee, a zoning code amendment to ensure unmarried couples could legally live in single family zoned areas, and the creation of a registry for couples to document their committed relationships. And. WHEREAS, the city and county of Denver as an employer has also long provided equality for our employees by defining family to include intimate partners of the same gender for purposes of employee benefits like sick leave and health insurance. And. Whereas, legal protection from discrimination and equal access to benefits has freed many LGBTQ persons to more fully participate in Denver's community and economy, enriching the lives of not only those individuals and their families, but all of Denver. And. Whereas, the recognition and celebration of these historic civil rights milestones is especially important given the recent backlashes occurring in states like North Carolina and Mississippi, which have sought to sanction and institutionalized discrimination against LGBTQ people. And given the work we still have to do right here in Denver and Colorado, including overcoming lingering disparities in LGBTQ health , the struggles of youth who are coming out, and the barriers to full acceptance and economic opportunity for transgender and gender non-conforming residents. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the City Council of the City and County of Denver, Section one, we honor our predecessors serving on the Denver City Council and in the office of Mayor in 1994. Their courage, courageous leadership in adopting civil rights protections for the gay and lesbian community and celebrate the voters of Denver. Upon the 20th anniversary of our rejection of hate in our great city, Section two, we honor all LGBTQ persons who came out from the margins to tell their stories and to be visible in ways that helped make these advancements possible. And we thank all the leaders, activists and allies who led these movements for justice. Section three We celebrate the 20th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court's favorable decision in Romer v Evans to uphold Denver's place on the right side of history. And for all the advancements in progress that have taken place since that decision. Section four We denounce the proliferation of efforts to prevent or roll back progress for LGBTQ dignity or equal access to employment across this country. And we applaud the Department of Justice for its strong stance in opposition to these measures. And we stand in solidarity with those withholding travel and economic investments in states who have adopted anti equality measures in section five that the Clerk of the city and county of Denver shall a test, in effect, the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation, and then a copy be transmitted to Tina Scardina, the center and to the elected officials present today who played a role in this historic progress. Thank you, Councilwoman Canete. Your motion to adopt. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill six council proclamation 16 to ask for it to be adopted. It has been moved and seconded, commented Councilwoman Canete. Thank you, Mr. President. It's very humbling to read this proclamation today from this dais. It's always humbling to serve the city and county of Denver as a transplant. To be accepted by your adopted city is always an honor, especially when you need to be intentional about learning the history that came before you. And it's especially humbling because I live so openly and freely with ease about who I am in a city that was built on the work of those who came before me. And so when I ran for office as an out lesbian, it was not difficult for me because of the work that happens before. My constituents rarely wanted to talk about it. It was not that noteworthy. And those who did were affirming. And that continues to be the case in my five years in service. These two things are related. The history of those who came before and the privilege of those who can live in our community, out, who can go to their jobs, who can contribute their talents in whatever department of the city it may be, from public works to parks to the contributions they make in every employment possible in this city, and to the places they can stay, restaurants they can go to, hotels they can stay at things that were not always possible, but did become so because of the work of those who came before. There are many folks here to be honored. I'm going to mention a few of them. Some of them will be coming up to acknowledge or to accept their proclamation. But please bear with me as I acknowledge council members who served in the 1990 City Council, my colleague Debbie Ortega , Councilwoman Happy Haines was also serving on that council at the time. I believe those are the only two we have from that year. If anyone's walked in. I missed you. I apologize. We have several council members who served afterwards during the litigation that followed during the policy changes for employment rates, and that includes Councilwoman Joyce Foster. And we also have Councilwoman Susan Casey here, who is writing a book actually about another woman. I'm about to acknowledge, Jean de Baffsky, who is the lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the Romer v Evans case. So it was her litigation that allowed cities like Denver to keep the nondiscrimination clauses that we had long before the states were ready to do that kind of protection. We have Pat Stedman, who we know now is our state senator, but at that time was a new law school graduate and a leader organizing others against these measures. And if you council secretary could please put the the switch the screen. Oh, it's up there already. I'm sorry I missed it. What you see here is a poster that was used in the campaign to defeat this ordinance. And you can see the number of names of individuals. Many of those individuals were not gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender. They were straight allies who stood up and said, this is wrong. And they put their names there. And you can see on the top, I was kind of confused. It has the results of the vote. I had never seen a campaign poster with the results, the results of the vote on it, but that was added afterwards. So this was used to help to defeat this. We have here I mentioned that we have the center's president, Deb Pollock, is here. The center is celebrating 40 years this year of serving the LGBTQ community at a time when folks didn't even know how to come out of the closet and they needed that supportive environment and they hosted our pride parade. If you want to learn more about the history on June 13th, they're going to have a panel with some of the folks who were involved, even in the decriminalization that came in the 1970s. Right. So used to be arrested. For those you loved, if you got caught having a conversation about that, you could be arrested. And so we've come such a very long way. We have a new generation of folks with us today. The LGBTQ Commission of Denver has two representatives here, as well as derives from the Human Rights and Community Partnerships. He, for the past 12 years has been the one taking complaints which we still get. Sometimes we are work is our work is not done. And so it's important that we have these laws on the books because there are times when we still need to make sure that there is a legal process for folks who face discrimination. And so Darius does that for us. With that, I want to thank my many colleagues for your support on LGBT issues every day. Frankly, you're always there on these issues. This is not unique to this proclamation, but especially for co-sponsoring tonight. And I want to thank all of you for the work that you did to bring us to this day. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Canete. Councilwoman Black. Thank you. And thank you, Councilwoman Kennish. That was very, all very well said. So I'm not going to add anything except for to acknowledge a few other people who are here tonight. Darlene Ebert was a city attorney at the time and she helped to draft the ordinance. She is my friend and my constituent. So thank you, Darlene, for coming. And I also wanted to recognize, in addition to Joyce Foster, who is a former city council person, to city council people before me and my friend, she also was a state senator and her husband, Rabbi Stephen Foster, who have been long time advocates for this community and against discrimination. Rabbi Foster worked with Councilwoman Kathy Reynolds and Reverend Gil Horne on the ordinance, and Rabbi Foster also was a cochairman on the No on two campaign. So thank you both for all of your hard work. Thanks and thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm so excited and honored to be able to sit up here and support this today and to be able to say thank you from up here to all the people who have fought so hard to get us where we are. I don't usually quote musicians. I've really bad taste in music generally, but in this case there's a line that I take with me every single day in my life. It's from Nakamura's song, Same Love, where he says No Freedom Tower Equal. And I take that with me every day. It really spoke to me. I do believe that the chains that bind any one of us bind us all, and we are not truly free as a people until everyone enjoys the same freedoms and the same rights. We're not free until each and every person can be celebrated for who they are and live a life that is free from hate and discrimination. And as you see from this proclamation, we have come so far on on equal rights for our LGBTQ family members. And but that doesn't mean that we're done. And so I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you. Thank you. To celebrate for a second. But also just to say here that I stand ready. And I think it's pretty evident from this proclamation that this council stands ready to continue this fight and to continue to work until we are truly free, because we are truly equal in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of each other. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Clark. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I am honored to be a co-sponsor tonight, as I was when Ordinance 623 was brought forward. Councilwoman, can you thank you for the 25 year reminder to the rest of the world all of what has transpired in in that time frame. I want to give a special shout out to Cathy Reynolds, who was the catalyst on city council that worked tirelessly with her aide, Judy Gold, who worked with the LGBT community to bring this legislation forward. They met for months and months to craft the language and then bring it forward. And it was passed by city council. And then to see what followed was a little challenging, but to see how the community really stuck together. And the night of the Supreme Court vote to see all the people celebrating in the streets of downtown, to realize that our United States Supreme Court saw that, you know, for local governments to be able to adopt their own legislation to deal with the rights of individuals and to treat everybody equally, was important to allow local governments to take the lead in doing that. And as several of my colleagues have said, the work is not done. I can remember just a few years ago working with one of the commissioners from the LGBT commission, making sure that our schools had a no bullying policy because there were LGBT students who were being harassed. And, you know, we worked with Denver Public Schools to make sure that they had an adopted policy that would be followed by all the schools to ensure that students could go to school and be able to learn freely without being intimidated or harassed by their, you know, by their their fellow students. So, you know, that's just one example of some of the challenges that we still deal with day in and day out. But just to be at this place in this city is a huge victory for all of my colleagues who were involved in this whole process to ensure that all individuals in this city are treated equally. So congratulations to everyone who was involved in the process. And again, you know, thanks for bringing this forward. I think this is one that is important to celebrate. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Ortega, councilman, new. Thank you and congratulations council acacia and really so proud to support this proclamation. And I'm so glad that we're here proclaiming equal rights for all of our citizens in our entire city and across this nation. And so I'm so glad we're getting past this stigma and having equal opportunities and rights for for everyone. During my campaign, I had some of the most fun. I did some political meeting, Senator blushing blue, one of the gay nightclubs on Colfax. And it was so incredible. I get the hardest questions about campaigning, both politics and and Denver at that meeting than any other setting I have. So I was so impressed with the quality of and the caring and the then the love that all our citizens have for our city. So especially having that night in black and blue and if you haven't been down to the gay rights gay pride parade, it was so much fun to do. Float there and see the thousands of citizen. Is it all along the streets just just celebrating and having fun and and it's quite an event. So I encourage you to go this year. And and thank you, councilwoman. Can you bring this up and proudly look forward to supporting it? Thank you. Councilman new Councilman Espinosa. Again, thank you for for bringing the proclamation forward. I just going to say that I one of the things that I relish about this position is the ability to sort of act on behalf of minority voices. That, to me, is a critical component to representative government. And so sometimes the majority is in the wrong and and they need somebody on this desk to be standing up on their behalf, you know, to see that there wasn't an initiated opposition. It's just I mean, it happened. It happened in California with Prop eight and where the majority was in the wrong. And I just it's never I mean, it's real easy to be on the right side of history when you know it's the right thing. I hope we don't have these things continue to come up, but they do. And I mean, we see it in national politics. And so and what's happening in North Carolina and time and time again, this is just going on and it's just awesome. It's just rambling. But I just want to say that I do relish this aspect in the representative form of government to actually act on behalf of the minority when they're in the right. And because a lot of times, more often than not, you would be surprised at how right the minority is in these things. So but thanks again for bringing this forward, Robin, and I hope I didn't deviate too far, but thank you to the community as well. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa, Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. And I thank my colleague, Councilwoman Canete, for bringing this forward and providing the opportunity to lend support. You know, I shared for the first time during the campaign a couple of years ago that I grew up at a time where it was not uncommon for adolescent males to make very bad and very cruel jokes about people who lived a different lifestyle. And I remain embarrassed and ashamed at my participation in that. And while my mind began to open during my college years, it was not until my children got into their junior high and high school years and began bringing home friends from the LGBTQ community. That I truly began to understand the breadth of the need for us to expand civil rights to all corners of our population. And I thank my children very much for that. You know, the old thing about the child being father to the man, and there's another personal note. As I was sitting at home yesterday enjoying my Memorial Day, I got a call from a friend who's whose son was in the ICU at a local hospital with a rather severe health challenge. And his son, who's 20 or 21 now, had been born and raised as a young girl and is identified as a male for about the last year. So in the midst of this young man's crisis, health crisis, I watched not just hospital staff, but friends and family struggle with him and her. His birth name is who's taken name. And it was just a poignant reminder about the complexity of these issues. And as has been said, I'm so proud of where we are as a city and just recognizing the long road yet ahead. And I just appreciate all of you who have worked so hard over the years in this area to make things a little bit easier for my young friend. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you. Councilwoman Kennish, for bringing this forward and. For your leadership and many things like this and for all of those. Here and out out of these. Chambers for fighting so strongly for these rights. And I am struck with. How connected we all are. In our history and our. Places, members of. Our family. Members of our. Friends. City leaders, city constituency. I am so proud to live in the Denver community, to live among the people who fight for things like this. Thank you all for all that you have done. And I hope that we can bring it. Keep bringing it forward. And follow your model. Thanks. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman, because I want to take I'm going to go to Flint and Brooks as they hadn't. Had a chance. I don't know why they're showing up. Okay. I did not. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Flynn, you're up. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm very proud to support this. And I just wanted to bring out one other name that hasn't been mentioned yet. And having been around at the time that all this was occurring in the immediate aftermath of the vote, within a week in the Webb administration, Mayor Wellington Webb, City Attorney Dan Muse announced his intention to challenge this in court on several grounds, one of which was Denver's home rule status. And I think we joined with Aspen and a few other localities, Boulder, and I think there was one other in that action. And Dan Muse, with whom I had the newspaper and many other folks at the other newspaper, had many go rounds over the eight years, I believe he was in the city attorney for Mayor Webb on this matter. It was to see him stand for this and to pursue it and to file the briefs and to follow it through all the way to to the resolution. It was very inspiring. And I just wanted to bring bring up Dan Muse, his name as well. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilman Brooks. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, Councilwoman Canete, for bringing this forward. And also just inspired by my colleagues words. And I just want to just end it with the obviously a little quote from our main man, MLK. You know, who who just said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And and that's why we're doing this. And we as allies, this is this is our duty and this is our responsibility. And as leaders, this is our responsibility in this city. So excited to stand up and be a co-sponsor to this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Any other comments on our commission for 20? I will I will simply add. Thank you, Councilman Kenneth, for bringing this forward. I say all the time, Denver is a remarkable city for for a number of reasons. But if you look at the diversity of this council body, it's probably, I believe, the most diverse in Colorado and other parts, because Denver is the city that really looks at people for what they bring to the table. And as Councilwoman Kinney's talked about, things that shouldn't matter don't in Denver. But the reality is, if some of us were running for office and other parts of this country, we would have no shot because prejudice is alive and well. Hatred is alive and well. And we must never forget that. We must continually fight that. I think about it wasn't that long ago in the time when I served in the military. You could openly love your country, but you couldn't openly love your partner. And I know several vets who had to get out of the military because of that law. And the absurdity of that, it's so obvious to us now, but it wasn't at that time where people had to hide who they were, if they wanted to, if they wanted to serve their country. So I'm thankful for Denver, for they continue to fight, but we must recognize there's still more work to be done. And thank you to all the people who came before us to blaze this path for us. See no other comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. Black eye. Brooks. Hi. Clark. Hi. Espinosa. Hi. Flynn, I. Gillmor, I. Cashman. Hi. Can each. I. Knew Ortega I. Susman Hi, Mr. President. All right. Madam Secretary, clean clothes are very nice results. 12 days to apply for 20 has been adopted. Councilman Canete. Is there someone you like or people to invite to the podium or see the proclamation? Thank you, Mr. President. I'm going to invite four representatives. They'll be very brief, but Tina Scardina, who is a public works employee and one of the activists who really helped to spur this this movement and lead some of these efforts for the ordinance. Happy Haines and Darlene Ebert, who, as Councilwoman Black mentioned, helped to write the ordinance, and Jean Dabrowski, who led the effort to defeat Amendment two in the courts. So they'll they'll just going to speak in quick succession. Thank you. Thank you very much for the acknowledgment tonight. Members of council, this is a humbling occasion. I just can't even believe my. I'm here. It's kind of like a dream. This is just absolutely wonderful. As you outlined in when you read it? Councilwoman Kennish There is a lot of things that happened and each one of those things that she mentioned has a story and has a timeline on it and had a lot of people that worked on it. And that's a lot of activism that happened in the city that made it better. I spent the good part of my twenties and thirties doing it, and it really did. It changed my life for the better. What I would like to do tonight is to acknowledge the straight allies that really made this work. As much as the activism, as much of the activism that we did, we didn't really know what we were doing. But Councilwoman Reynolds did. Councilwoman Donahue did, Wellington Webb did. Those were some of the leaders that we went to when we didn't know what the heck to do. A lot of the history that you talked about happened in this room or it happened in the mayor's office or it happened in one of the courtrooms in this building. This building in this city means that an awful lot to me. This is my hometown. I'm so proud to be here. And if it wasn't for Reynolds and Donahue and Mayor Webb, I probably wouldn't be here either. But my gratitude goes out to you, Councilwoman Kenney, and all members of city council to have a unanimous proclamation. As you said before, nothing was so obvious back in the eighties and nineties we had to count votes when we didn't really know how to do that, but we were successful. And there are a lot of folks here today in this room that did a lot of work and a lot of people who aren't here that did a heck of a lot of work. I'd like to thank them for everything that they did. And again, thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. President, members of council, I'm honored and proud to stand here on behalf of my former colleagues on the city council. Thank you, Councilwoman Kennish, for reminding us of a history that we might be doomed to repeat if we don't take these moments to think about the history. I have to echo people's sentiments about the leadership of Councilwoman Cathy Reynolds and her aide, Judy Gold, who worked tirelessly with other members of the city council. And two mayors that started this process started with Mayor Federico Pena, and it was carried through and really completed under Mayor Wellington Webb and and my extraordinary friends and colleagues, Rabbi and the Honorable Joyce Foster, who have been on the front lines of every battle for justice and equality in this town for as long as I can remember. I just kudos to that extraordinary leadership and to those young activists who wouldn't say no and who stood in front of this whole community and and really displayed their leadership . One final thing. As you saw the the poster. We'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge the citizens of this wonderful city that we're all proud to serve and time and again stand on the right side of justice. And they did that in 1991. And so we would be remiss if we didn't say thank you to our voters and to the citizens of this city. Thank you very much. Hello members of Council and thank you for this opportunity to recognize this ordinance. So my name is Darlene Egbert. And I was in the city attorney's office here in Denver for 17 years and was honored to be asked to work on drafting this anti-discrimination ordinance, which was one of the most significant ordinances that I was involved with. And there was a team that took over a. Year to carefully craft every provision of this ordinance. And it was such a. Dedicated and devoted team of people that really wanted to to make a. A very ironclad law which amendment to tried to strike down. But Denver was. And was a plaintiff in. That lawsuit, along with the cities of Boulder and Aspen and Telluride, whose ordinances were also would also have been struck down by Amendment two. And really through the yeoman efforts. Of Jean de Borowski. As lead attorney in that case, but so many other. Devoted attorneys and and members of the community who fought that fight. We had cases in Denver County excuse me, Denver District Court that we won. I think we were one of the first cases live on court. Television, which existed at the time. And then we went on to the Colorado Supreme Court, one there, and then ultimately in the United States Supreme Court, which was a tremendous victory for the city of Denver and its citizens. So I was very. Proud to have been part of that effort. Thank you. Thank you all for supporting all of the efforts. That have been made over the years and for the proclamation today. There were several plaintiffs in the Amendment two case who lived in Denver. Couple of them. Richard Evans, who was the lead. Plaintiff, was an. Employee of. The city and county of Denver. And Angela Romero was a police officer. And we felt that we had the individual plaintiffs. We needed to make our case. And it would help immensely if particularly the city. And county of Denver would be a plaintiff. The reason for that was because court precedent, an amendment to was passed, was against LGBT rights across the board. The U.S. Supreme Court's. Only precedent in the area. Was a case called Bowers versus Hardwick. Which upheld an anti-sodomy law in Georgia. And the language in that opinion. Was just horrific. So we thought it would be very, very useful. To have the. City and county of Denver as a. Plaintiff. Because it would make it easier for a district court judge sitting in this building to find that Amendment. Two was unconstitutional. And I can't tell you how much I. Think that was important. Because the prestige of the city and the elected officials of the city saying. We think this initiative is awful, was very helpful. Jeff Bayless was the trial court judge here. And as Darleen. Said, it was a royal. Event. Her words, four weeks. One week of. Preliminary hearing and. Forum and three more weeks of trial, first in. January 1993 for the preliminary injunction. And then again in October. 1993, when we. Came back from the Colorado Supreme Court for the full trial Court TV broadcast. The entire trial across the nation live. And the Colorado Supreme Court arguments were broadcast on a local television live. So it. Was an opportunity. To help educate and begin to educate people across the country about what this type of. Discrimination meant, what kinds of things we certainly did not want to do. And really began a road that has not been nearly as long as I thought it was going to be to get as much successfully obtained to protect LGBT rights. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Canete, and thank you all so much for speaking on this. All right. That was our only proclamation. So we're moving on to the resolutions. Madam Secretary, will you please read please read the resolutions.