A historic Boulder County figure and LGBTQ pioneering ally died on Sunday.
Clela Rorex passed away in Longmont at the age of 78. On March 27, 1975, as Boulder County Clerk and Recorder, Rorex issued the first marriage license to a same-sex couple in the United States.
“That act of courage changed the course of her life and the course of the lives of countless LGBTQ+ people,” said Mardi Moore, executive director of Out Boulder County and friend of Rorex. “Clela was 40 years ahead of the country's politics on marriage equality.”
According to her obituary, Rorex was born in Denver on July 23, 1943, and was adopted by Cecil and Ruby Rorex in Steamboat Springs, where she spent her childhood. Rorex moved to Guantanamo Bay with her husband in 1967, where she experienced government-sanctioned segregation for the first time.
She returned to Colorado with her son in 1970 and earned a degree from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Rorex became the Boulder County Clerk on Jan. 1, 1975 after running an upstart campaign against an entrenched Republican Party that had held the clerkship in Colorado for decades.
Her platform focused on making it easier for people, especially students, to vote and expanding access to services offered through the clerk’s office, including marriage licenses. As clerk, Rorex quickly expanded county clerk office hours, randomized the issuance of license plate numbers — ending the practice of assigning lower-numbered plates to political elites and powerbrokers — and made it the responsibility of the clerk, not the public, to register voters.
On March 26, 1975, two men from Colorado Springs entered the Boulder County Clerk office requesting a marriage license. Rorex reached out to Assistant District Attorney Bill Wise, seeking clarification about existing Colorado state law or code that would prohibit her from issuing a marriage license to two people of the same sex.
Wise responded that “there is no statutory law prohibiting the issuance of a license, probably because the situation was simply not contemplated in the past by our legislature.”
Rorex issued the license to the couple the following day.
“After having been so deeply involved in the women’s rights movements, who was I to then deny a right to anyone else? It wasn’t my job to legislate morality,” Rorex said in 2016.
Within days of issuing the first same-sex marriage license, local and national news picked up the story. Over the next month, Rorex issued five more licenses to same-sex couples.
As a result, she received hundreds of letters and calls to her office and home condemning and threatening her.
“My son would sometimes pick up the phone and I could always tell when it was someone calling about the licenses, because he would get this terrified look in his eyes,” Rorex said in 2015. “It changed our lives.”
Rorex complied in late April when Colorado State Attorney General G.D. MacFarlane directed her to stop issuing the licenses to same-sex couples. By that point, she had issued a license to Richard Adams and Anthony Sullivan, and their marriage would set the stage for a federal battle that would not be resolved until 40 years later.
Adams, a U.S. citizen, and Sullivan, an Australian citizen, had been seeking to establish legal permanent residency for Sullivan through marriage and the license issued by Rorex would play a critical role.
Rorex resigned as Boulder County Clerk and Recorder in 1977, never holding elective office again. She raised two sons, obtained two Masters degrees and finished her career working as a legal administrator for the Native American Rights Fund.
She celebrated the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, legalising same-sex marraige, on the steps of the Boulder County Courthouse where she had first issued the six licenses 40 years earlier.
Shortly after, the U.S. government issued a green card to Sullivan, officially recognizing the marriage license that Rorex had issued in 1975 as sufficient supporting documentation for the residency application submitted by Sullivan and his husband Adams, who had died in 2012.
To this day, none of the marriage licenses that Rorex issued to same-sex marriage couples have been revoked or invalidated.
“Just as important as her historical significance is the profound impact Clela had on local
members of the LGBTQ+ community, like myself, who had the opportunity to be her friend,” Moore said. “Clela was a blessing to everyone who knew and loved her. I once told Clela that she was the ally I needed before I knew I needed one and I meant it.”
Rorex spent the last years of her life dedicated to LGBTQ ally-ship and advocacy, volunteering with Out Boulder County, and programming for LGBTQ individuals in and around Boulder County.
Her celebration of life will be held on what would have been her 79th birthday, July 23, 2022, and details are forthcoming. At Rorex’s requisition, in lieu of flowers, donations can be made in her name to Out Boulder County.
