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Two different legal approaches to gay marriage

Attorney general candidates offer proactive, reactive perspectives

DENVER – Colorado will pick a new attorney general for the first time in 10 years – and nothing shows the distinction between the candidates like the legal journey of gay marriage in the state.

Democrat Don Quick, the former Adams County district attorney, has spent months criticizing how the issue was handled by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, where his Republican opponent Cynthia Coffman is chief deputy.

Quick’s stance is that current Republican Attorney General John Suthers should have stopped defending the state’s 2006 voter-approved gay-marriage ban after several courts nationwide ruled such laws were unconstitutional.

Suthers maintained throughout the legal battles that until the U.S. Supreme Court issued guidance on the matter, it was his duty to defend Colorado’s law, and he did so until the high court this month declined to hear appeals from several states seeking to ban gay marriage.

Coffman said she would’ve handled the matter like Suthers.

“That is probably the fundamental difference (between Quick and me), and it just happens to be that same-sex marriage is the issue that highlighted it,” Coffman said. “What else are you not going to defend? Because once you say I’m going to pick and choose what laws to enforce and what arguments to make, then you have left the parameters of the job, and you have made it into a policy position – a policy-making position and a political position.”

The way Quick sees it, the attorney general has an ethical obligation to challenge laws believed to be unconstitutional.

“When a state law targets a minority group, a specific group, and denies them a fundamental right, that’s a violation of equal protection,” said Quick, who was also the former top deputy under Democrat Ken Salazar when he was attorney general.

Suthers, who has served since 2005, is term-limited and not seeking re-election.



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