Rorex recalled that she had little public support and didn’t challenge the attorney general.Ī recall effort was launched against Rorex, a single mother and University of Colorado graduate student.
State and federal law didn’t recognize gay marriage at the time. The then-31-year-old agreed and, in the end, issued a total of six licenses to gay couples before Colorado’s attorney general at the time ordered her to stop. She told The Associated Press in 2014 that she saw a parallel with the women’s movement and found nothing in state law preventing it. Rorex was a newly elected Boulder County clerk when a gay couple denied a marriage license elsewhere sought her help in March 1975. Rorex died Sunday of complications from recent surgery at a hospice care facility in Longmont, the Daily Camera reported.
(AP) - Clela Rorex, a former Colorado county clerk considered a pioneer in the gay rights movement for being the first public official to issue a same-sex marriage license in 1975, has died.
