Two years after I proposed to her with a black pearl ring and her favorite City, O'City cupcakes, I married my wife at the Lumber Baron Inn & Gardens in the Highland neighborhood. The service was exactly what we expected. One of our best friends performed a smudging ceremony to honor Liz's Native American heritage; We jumped the broom to show respect to my African-American heritage. We walked down the aisle to a ukulele version of “Wagon Wheel” and performed country line dancing at the reception (we were really into that at the time). There was just one catch: it was June 2013 and same-sex marriage wasn't legal at the time. After our wedding, we filled out the paperwork for the next best thing – a civil partnership.

The following June, when Boulder County Clerk Hillary Hall announced that she would be signing same-sex marriage licenses, we immediately drove to Boulder. What better way to celebrate our first anniversary than by getting married again? However, about a month later we received a letter from the Attorney General telling us that our new marriage was not legal. Colorado has not recognized gay marriage. We added this note to our wedding registry along with the now invalidated license and continued our unauthorized relationship.

Don't get me wrong; Many people are satisfied with a civil partnership. But it was important to us to be legally married because we wanted the same rights as everyone else. We never wanted to be in a situation where, for example, one of us needed emergency care and the other couldn't make decisions on our behalf. Furthermore, for most of our lives, society had told us that we were “less than.” We were fed up.

On June 26, 2015, three days before our second wedding anniversary, the U.S. Supreme Court finally guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry. Liz and I joined hundreds of other people, including our closest friends, on the west steps of the Colorado Capitol, where we hugged, laughed and cried tears of joy. When President Barack Obama declared that marriage equality was now the law of the land, I took a deep breath. Once we signed the proper documents, our marriage became legitimate, and no one could take that away from us—or so we thought.

It wasn't until 2021, when I became executive director of One Colorado, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, that my new team made me aware of this phrase in our state constitution: “Only a union between one man and one woman is valid,” or in this state, marriage be recognized.” Voters approved this formulation in 2006. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2015 ruling, Amendment 43 has no practical impact on queer Coloradans today. But the conservative justices who now control that chamber could decide at any time to overturn the earlier decision — an idea that no longer seems so far-fetched after the reversal of Roe v. Wade. In this case, same-sex couples would no longer be able to marry.

That’s why One Colorado worked to get its “Protecting the Freedom to Marry” initiative on this month’s ballot. The measure would repeal Amendment 43 and demonstrate that no matter what happens at the federal level, the Centennial State is committed to justice, inclusion and freedom. More importantly, it would protect families like mine. I love that my wife loves me so much that she married me three times, but neither she nor anyone else should have to go through such difficult trials to prove it.

– As told to Michelle Shortall by Nadine Bridges