“I was a feminist asking for equal rights.””

Clela Rorex

BOULDER — In the spring of 1975, two men walked into the Boulder County clerk’s office and asked if they could get married.

The clerk behind the counter, Clela Rorex, had only worked in the office for a few months. Same-sex marriage was not recognized anywhere in the United States. Most clerks might have said no, but in a genuine act of fairness, Rorex broke the mold. 

She proceeded to check Colorado law and asked the district attorney’s office to review the current statutes. What she found surprised her: The marriage code described marriage as a union between two people but did not specifically say it had to be between a man and a woman.

She issued the license. At the time, she did not think she was making history; she thought she was just following the law.

“I was a feminist asking for equal rights,” Rorex said years later in a 2015 oral history interview with the Boulder Public Library. “Who was I to deny equal rights to someone else who was asking for the same?”

The story soon exploded into a media firestorm that put Rorex on the national stage, according to reporting by Jezy J. Gray, now editor of the Caribou Current, a sister publication to The Mountain-Ear,

The decision made a 31-year-old county clerk from Boulder part of a national debate that would continue for decades. 

Rorex’s decision becomes national news

The first license was issued in March 1975 to two men from Colorado Springs who had already been turned away by another clerk. Word began to spread.

Rorex ended up issuing six marriage licenses to same-sex couples before state officials intervened.

Colorado Attorney General J.D. McFarland later ordered her to stop issuing the licenses because state and federal law at the time did not recognize same-sex marriages, according to Associated Press reporting.

The public reaction was immediate and deeply divided.

For LGBTQIA+ people and early allies in the fight for marriage equality, Rorex became a hero. Others responded with anger.

“You are a shame and disgrace to decent society,” one Baptist pastor from Oklahoma City wrote in a letter to the clerk’s office that summer, according to Gray's report. The clerk’s office received angry letters from across the country, including messages from religious leaders who accused her of encouraging immoral behavior. 

Rorex later said people called her home and shouted insults or threats. Her young son sometimes answered the phone.

The stress took a toll on her and her family. Rorex suffered severe migraines during the controversy and threats of removal from office. After issuing six licenses, she was ordered to stop, but the fight did not end.

As Samyukta Sarma reported in The Mountain-Ear during last year’s Pride month, “Boulder County clerk Hillary Hall followed in Rorex’s footsteps, issuing over 200 same-sex marriage licenses over the course of about three months in 2014.”

Hall and Rorex’s actions collectively led to clerks across the country being authorized to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

The life of Clela Rorex

Clela Ann Rorex was born on July 23, 1943, in Denver. She was adopted as an infant and raised in Steamboat Springs, where her father served as Routt County clerk for many years.

Growing up around local government gave her an early and keen understanding of public service. After graduating from high school, Rorex attended the University of Colorado Boulder. 

During that time, she married a naval officer and spent several years living at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. That experience changed her and how she saw the world.

In her 2015 Boulder Public Library oral history interview, Rorex described how the base had serious racial divisions. Workers from Jamaica and Cuba performed most of the labor jobs. Seating in the theaters on the base was separated by rank and race. Seeing those divisions made Rorex more aware of discrimination and inequality.

When she returned to Colorado in the early 1970s, she became involved in the growing women’s rights movement. She joined the Boulder chapter of the National Organization for Women and participated in small discussion groups where women talked openly about equality and social expectations.

In 1974, Rorex decided to run for Boulder County Clerk and Recorder after hearing Democrats say they were looking for “the right man for the job,” a remark that made her think a woman could do it just as well.

She had little political experience, but she understood the work from watching her father do it.

Her campaign relied heavily on volunteers who knocked on doors and spoke with voters across the county. Against expectations, she won the election and took office in January 1975.

Three months later, the request for a same-sex marriage license arrived. 

A decision that echoed for decades

At the time Rorex issued those six licenses, no one thought the issue of same-sex marriage would become one of the country’s most significant civil rights debates.

For decades afterward, same-sex marriage remained illegal in most states. But the movement for LGBTQ rights continued to grow and gain momentum.

In 2014, courts struck down Colorado’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. The following year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry nationwide.

Looking back, historians and activists often point to Rorex’s decision as one of the earliest moments in that long legal and political struggle.

After leaving elected office, Rorex worked in administrative and legal roles. She spent many years with the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder. She also remained active in community programs and LGBTQ advocacy.

She often attended Pride events and spoke with students about equality in her later years.

Rorex died on June 19, 2022, at a hospice facility in Longmont at age 78, according to Associated Press reporting.