Mark Holdbrooks was a 16-year-old gay kid in 1975, living in a small town south of Birmingham, Ala., and he was the only person who knew he was gay.
When he read an article in The Birmingham News that Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Clela Rorex had issued the United States’ first same-sex marriage license, he was filled with hope that one day he could meet someone and get married.
“I couldn’t tell a soul,” he said. “I was a scared little gay kid. But I never lost hope. Harvey Milk said you have to give people hope, and Clela gave me hope.”
“You’re going to make me cry before this even starts,” Rorex said as the two stood inside Boulder County commission chambers on Friday afternoon to mark the courthouse’s inclusion in the National Historic Register as an important place in the history of LGBTQ rights.
Holdbrooks, who came with his husband Nick, presented Rorex with a bouquet of roses during the ceremony. A plaque on the Pearl Street Mall side of the courthouse gives it rare standing along places like the Stonewall Inn in New York City, where members of the gay community rioted following a police raid in 1969.
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