I understood it — I mean, I really got it — halfway through it all, or about 45 minutes before the cops slapped the cuffs on Kate Burns.
It was a simple thing, something City Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O’Malley says happens a dozen times on some days: The young couple filled out a bit of paperwork, raised their right hands and took an oath. They were married.
Kate Burns shivered.
She stood on that very same spot at City Hall two years ago with the love of her life, Sheila Schroeder, and tried to do the same thing. Instead, they got arrested.
On Tuesday, Burns returned, this time to peacefully protest the California Supreme Court’s decision upholding Proposition 8, a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. And once again, she, along with four others, went to jail.
They were among about 50 protesters who descended upon the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building following the California ruling to stage what organizers said was one of more than 100 such demonstrations across the country.
Burns arrived early. She was fastening a pink bandana around her left forearm when I walked up. Turns out, the bandana was an agreed-upon signal to the police as to who among the 50 was to be arrested.
“Yeah, I’m getting arrested,” she told me. “And for the love of my life, I’d do it again and again and again.”
Schroeder, a teacher, was at work. “She has a dedication to her students,” Burns said. “She’ll come if I need to be bailed out.”
They were arrested Sept. 24, 2007, when they staged a sit-in at the marriage-license desk in a challenge to Colorado’s own ban against gay marriage. Both were convicted of trespassing and given 28 hours of community service.
“I’m supporting those in California who are in mourning today,” she said. “I think any decision that enshrines discrimination in a state’s constitution is intolerable.”
The others about to be arrested soon arrived. They were all in their 60s or older, including Lewis Thompson, 63, and Laurin Foxworth, 83, who were married six years ago in Canada.
“The death of one of us means that the other will lose not only his spouse, but also his home,” Thompson said.
After a combined 83 years of paying into Social Security, and 55 years into their pensions, it is unconscionable, he said, that they cannot leave each other a survivor benefit.
The five entered the Webb building holding hands. Lt. Catherine L. Davis and nine of her officers stood down a hall as the group blocked the marriage-license window.
“We have it all worked out,” Davis said.
Tommy Chase and Jennifer Comfort of Denver were filling out paperwork when the group arrived. They raised their right hands. I think I saw Burns, 46, standing with her back to the couple, wince and wipe an eye.
That’s when I got it.
There was a time in the not-too-distant past, you see, when my wife and I would have been turned away from that very same window. I’d have gone to jail for her more times than I can now imagine.
Burns did not flinch when Daniel Stone and Ave Maria Bucy of Denver arrived for their marriage license, couldn’t get to the counter and the police were called.
She apologized to the couple, told them they were not the adversary.
“I can’t sit idly by,” Burns said when I passed her outside the building, a female officer searching her. “Not when my partner and I can’t do what so many other couples do so freely.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
