Cinema Q will chronicle Boulder's forty-year legacy of same-sex marriage

Despite all the hoopla about Hillary Hall issuing same-sex marriage licenses in Boulder, marriage equality is not a new concept in that town. As Westword has reported, Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Clela Rorex issued the first same-sex marriage licenses in the country in the mid-1970s. Although the effort was...

By Kyle Harris

July 15, 2014

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Despite all the hoopla about Hillary Hall issuing same-sex marriage licenses in Boulder, marriage equality is not a new concept in that town. As Westword has reported, Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Clela Rorex issued the first same-sex marriage licenses in the country in the mid-1970s. Although the effort was short-lived, the results of Rorex's pioneering activism have been chronicled in Limited Partnership, the closing-night documentary at Cinema Q, the SIE FilmCenter's annual lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender film festival.

Rorex's efforts in the '70s ended when a rancher came in with his horse and said he wanted to marry the filly. After consulting the law, Rorex pointed out that the eight-year-old horse was underage and would require parental consent.

But as the past forty years have shown, civil unions are no longer a joke, and same-sex marriage is coming much closer to reality. Rorex will join filmmaker Thomas Miller at the screening of Limited Partnership to discuss the movie and marriage equality, then and now.

Loaded with archival footage, the film chronicles a forty-year love story between Filipino-American Richard Adams and Australian Tony Sullivan, two of the first men to marry in Colorado. Shortly after the couple wed, Sullivan applied for a green card, which the Immigration and Naturalization Service denied. In response, the couple sued the U.S. government, in the first lawsuit over same-sex marriage.

The screening of Limited Partnership is set for 7:15 p.m. on July 27 at the Sie FilmCenter. Tickets are $15 for non-members and $12 for members.

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