Two years after I proposed with a black-pearl ring and her favorite cupcakes from City, O’ City, I married my wife at the Lumber Baron Inn & Gardens in the Highland neighborhood. The service was everything we wanted it to be. One of our best friends performed a smudging ceremony to honor Liz’s Native American heritage; we jumped the broom to pay respects to my African American ancestry. We walked down the aisle to a ukulele version of “Wagon Wheel” and had country line dancing at the reception (we were really into that back then). There was just one catch: It was June 2013, and same-sex marriage wasn’t legal at the time. After our wedding, we filled out paperwork for the next best thing—a civil union.

The next June, when Boulder County clerk Hillary Hall announced that she would sign same-sex marriage certificates, we drove to Boulder right away. What better way to celebrate our first anniversary than by getting hitched…again? About a month later, however, we received a letter from the state attorney general informing us that our new marriage wasn’t legal. Colorado didn’t recognize gay marriage. We pasted that note alongside the newly void license in our wedding book and carried on with our unsanctioned relationship.

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Don’t get me wrong; a lot of folks are happy with a civil union. But being legally married was important to us because we wanted the same rights as anyone else. We never wanted to be in a situation where, say, one of us needed emergency care and the other person couldn’t make decisions on their behalf. Moreover, society had been telling us that we were “less than” for most of our lives. We were tired of it.

Nadine Bridges (right) and her bride, Liz Campbell. Photo courtesy of Nadine Bridges

Finally, on June 26, 2015, three days before our second wedding anniversary, the U.S. Supreme Court guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry. Liz and I joined hundreds of other people, including our closest friends, on the west steps of the Colorado Capitol, where we hugged, laughed, and cried tears of joy. When President Barack Obama declared that marriage equality was now the law of the land, I breathed the deepest exhale of my life. After signing the right documents, our marriage would become legit, and no one could take that away from us—or so we thought.

It wasn’t until 2021, when I became executive director of One Colorado, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, that my new team brought this sentence in our state constitution to my attention: “Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state.” Voters approved this language in 2006. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling, Amendment 43 has no practical impact on queer Coloradans today. But the conservative justices who now control that bench could always decide to strike down that previous decision—an idea that doesn’t seem so far-fetched following Roe v. Wade’s reversal. Should that happen, same-sex couples would no longer be able to get married.

That’s why One Colorado worked to get its Protecting the Freedom to Marry initiative on this month’s ballot. The measure would repeal Amendment 43, demonstrating that—no matter what happens on the federal level—the Centennial State is committed to equity, inclusion, and freedom. More important: It would protect families like mine. I love that my wife loves me enough to have married me three times, but neither she, nor anyone else, should have to endure such arduous trials to prove it.

—As told to Michelle Shortall by Nadine Bridges

This article was originally published in 5280 November 2024.
Michelle Shortall
Michelle Shortall
Michelle Shortall is a senior editor at 5280, where she manages Compass and writes and edits home stories for 5280.com.