Amendment 2 Colorado: How the State Became the 'Hate State'

Amendment 2 Colorado did more than decline to protect gay residents: it wrote a ban on such protections into the state Constitution. That choice set off a national boycott, the 'Hate State' label and a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Start with the measure itself, then follow the boycott to the court ruling that ended it.

This measure went further than most anti-discrimination fights do. According to Wikipedia's entry on 1992 Colorado Amendment 2, the amendment changed the state Constitution so that neither the state nor any of its subdivisions could enact, adopt or enforce any law or policy protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation.

That is the difference between a ban and a refusal to act. A city could not keep an existing ordinance safe from repeal, and it could not pass a new one. The prohibition was written into the Constitution itself, which is why it drew the response it did.

Supporters of the measure expected a policy debate. What followed was a coordinated national boycott by businesses, civic groups and entertainers, who cancelled conventions and events in Colorado, and the measure drew intense national coverage. The label 'Hate State' came out of that reaction.

The phrase has outlived the vote. Westword traces how the strategy that gave Colorado that label is being repeated in later election cycles. For a reader following the term, that piece is the clearest bridge from the boycott to the present day.

The challenge reached the nation's highest court as Romer v. Evans. The court held that Amendment 2 could not single out gay, lesbian and bisexual people for a unique legal disability. The case was brought by Richard G. Evans and other plaintiffs, including the cities of Denver, Boulder and Aspen.

Colorado Newsline covered the ruling under the headline "Supreme Court shuts down anti-LGBTQ amendment". It is the most recent account of how the amendment ended.

Denver refused to comply from the start. The mayor and City Council would not repeal the city's anti-discrimination ordinance, which effectively dared the state to enforce the amendment against its capital. The stand was both symbolic and practical: Colorado's largest city was on record against the measure while the courts decided its fate, and it then took its place among the plaintiffs in the case that ended the amendment.

Denver's LGBTQ+ history reaches beyond this one fight. Two related pages on the site pick up the thread: the Denver City Council protests known as Colorado's Stonewall and the Denver Principles AIDS text.

Colorado's public-media archive documents the measure in its own entry in the CSPM "cos-150-story" series, which preserves landmark moments in the state's political history from its first one hundred fifty years. The CSPM: Amendment 2 page is the archival record to check other accounts of the amendment against.

It sits alongside the Newsline coverage of the ruling, so the two together give the beginning and the end of the story in Colorado's own media.

Amendment 2 was a change to the state Constitution, so the document's origins are the natural next stop. Where Colorado became a state and Constitution Hall, where statehood was written cover the founding charter that the amendment altered. Read the Denver history pages first and the Constitution Hall pages second, and the vote sits in its full context.