A  Brighton judge answered the question for everyone in Colorado still struggling with whether and how to end Colorado’s embarrassing ban on gay marriage.

“They all got it wrong?” Adams County District Court Judge C. Scott Crabtree asked, according to a story this week in the Denver Post, talking about a growing list of district court judges across the country overturning similar gay marriage bans in other states. “What am I supposed to do then when presented with this? Just punt?”

Exactly. The days of kicking this awkward political football down the field are long gone. Discrimination against homosexuals in the United States is going the way of codified racism. Additional states each month recognize the bigotry in discriminating against gays and lesbians in regards to marriage and every other right afforded heterosexuals, but not everyone. The U.S. military has recognized and rectified that inequity. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a specific law withholding specific rights and privileges from gays is unconstitutional.

In states all across the country — even in the South and traditionally conservative regions — attorneys general have declined to defend gay-marriage bans, recognizing the futility and sheer cruelty of the task.

Not here. In a place where voters were sold a malicious pack of lies to get them to vote for the state ban in 2006, Attorney General John Suthers is leading the charge to argue to Crabtree that the gay-marriage ban should stand. This, despite poll after poll of Colorado voters, who make it clear their support of the ban has evaporated.

Colorado gets it now. Even though voters believed specious threats several years ago that marriage, families, taxes and more were at risk by not banning gay marriages, a majority of Coloradans see what a farce that was.

Among the most laughable of arguments Suthers’ team is making is that the ban on gay marriage is needed to ensure the continuation of the human race. The lame argument is that a major component of marriage is as an agent to having children. Since homosexuals cannot, naturally, produce offspring, they cannot marry, and if they do, child-producing brides and grooms might also somehow be at risk.

Even Crabtree balked at the claim, revealing that he has heterosexual friends in their sixties planning a marriage with no intention of rearing children. Should they be prohibited from marrying?

Even more to the point, more children than ever are conceived out of wedlock in this country, often as a prompt for heterosexual marriages. It might come as a surprise to Suthers that no ceremony, license or governmental sanction is needed for men and women to produce offspring. 

All the arguments fail. All of them. Rather than pander to a shrinking minority of stubborn Colorado residents unable to let go of their own irrational and unconstitutional biases, Suthers and the state should concede the inevitable loss of the argument and the case. Instead of further embarrassing the state, which has a proud and active history of fairness and support of gays, minorities and women, Suthers should allow misled voters to rectify their mistake with some shred of dignity and contrition.

Since it looks like that won’t be the case, and barring an unlikely, sudden and monumental Supreme Court ruling, it looks like it will be up to the next Colorado attorney general to clean up this mess.

A  Brighton judge answered the question for everyone in Colorado still struggling with whether and how to end Colorado’s embarrassing ban on gay marriage.

“They all got it wrong?” Adams County District Court Judge C. Scott Crabtree asked, according to a story this week in the Denver Post, talking about a growing list of district court judges across the country overturning similar gay marriage bans in other states. “What am I supposed to do then when presented with this? Just punt?”

Exactly. The days of kicking this awkward political football down the field are long gone. Discrimination against homosexuals in the United States is going the way of codified racism. Additional states each month recognize the bigotry in discriminating against gays and lesbians in regards to marriage and every other right afforded heterosexuals, but not everyone. The U.S. military has recognized and rectified that inequity. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a specific law withholding specific rights and privileges from gays is unconstitutional.

In states all across the country — even in the South and traditionally conservative regions — attorneys general have declined to defend gay-marriage bans, recognizing the futility and sheer cruelty of the task.

Not here. In a place where voters were sold a malicious pack of lies to get them to vote for the state ban in 2006, Attorney General John Suthers is leading the charge to argue to Crabtree that the gay-marriage ban should stand. This, despite poll after poll of Colorado voters, who make it clear their support of the ban has evaporated.

Colorado gets it now. Even though voters believed specious threats several years ago that marriage, families, taxes and more were at risk by not banning gay marriages, a majority of Coloradans see what a farce that was.

Among the most laughable of arguments Suthers’ team is making is that the ban on gay marriage is needed to ensure the continuation of the human race. The lame argument is that a major component of marriage is as an agent to having children. Since homosexuals cannot, naturally, produce offspring, they cannot marry, and if they do, child-producing brides and grooms might also somehow be at risk.

Even Crabtree balked at the claim, revealing that he has heterosexual friends in their sixties planning a marriage with no intention of rearing children. Should they be prohibited from marrying?

Even more to the point, more children than ever are conceived out of wedlock in this country, often as a prompt for heterosexual marriages. It might come as a surprise to Suthers that no ceremony, license or governmental sanction is needed for men and women to produce offspring. 

All the arguments fail. All of them. Rather than pander to a shrinking minority of stubborn Colorado residents unable to let go of their own irrational and unconstitutional biases, Suthers and the state should concede the inevitable loss of the argument and the case. Instead of further embarrassing the state, which has a proud and active history of fairness and support of gays, minorities and women, Suthers should allow misled voters to rectify their mistake with some shred of dignity and contrition.

Since it looks like that won’t be the case, and barring an unlikely, sudden and monumental Supreme Court ruling, it looks like it will be up to the next Colorado attorney general to clean up this mess.