SoleJourney is an inspiring and true story of courageous families confronting the anti-LGBT rhetoric and political policy-making of
the fundamentalist mega-organization Focus on the Family.
About the Directors as Activists
In 2006 Colorado passed Amendment 43 that openly discriminates against gay men and lesbians wishing to marry.
In an effort to draw attention to this injustice Kate and Sheila, with the support of Soulforce Colorado and hundreds of thousands of Coloradans who voted against Amendment 43, staged a sit-in when denied a marriage license at the Denver Clerk and Recorder Office. Denver police arrested Sheila and Kate for trespassing on September 24, 2007 when they peacefully remained in the office after closing time. Their sit-in protest was an effort to achieve basic fairness and marriage equality for all of Colorado's families. Numerous religious leaders registered their endorsement for the couple by submitting affidavits in support of marriage equality.
The Burns-Schroeder marriage equality trial took place on Tuesday, May 6th and Wednesday, May 7th.
The biggest victory was to have cameras permitted in the courtroom. Footage of the trial made it on the news both days of the trial. Furthermore, various news outlets including the New York Times, The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News published stories about the trial. This met our goal of creating public discourse around the issue of marriage equality.
After presenting our case to a six-person jury, we were convicted of trespassing. Judge Breese gave us an opportunity to address him before sentencing and Kate bravely went before the judge and the packed courtroom and said:
“Thank you, your honor. As good citizens, we will, of course, serve out any sentence you give to us. And we will do it with joy in our hearts because, though the road to justice is sometimes a long one, we feel we have taken some steps down the path. We wanted to respectfully ask that if you are equally weighing between the options of jail time/higher fines and community service hours, would you consider giving us more community service hours? The whole spirit behind our action was to improve our community, and we would welcome further opportunities to do so.”
The judge generously honored our request and commuted most of our fine into community service hours. We each had to pay $41 in court fees and will perform 28 hours of community service. We signed up to do our community service hours for the GLBT Center of Colorado—is that perfect, or what?
Sheila and Kate pay their court fees under
the supervision of their lead attorney
Mari Newman of Kilmer, Lane and Newman LLC.
Dear Friends and Supporters,
First and foremost, we want to tell you how much strength you gave us with your
positive thoughts, emails, phone calls, attendance at the action and the trial, and
hugs. THANK YOU.
The Fox 31 website put up a lot of good footage during the trial. Check out these links to see some of the pre-trial and post-trial coverage.
And did you see the wonderful column by Bill Johnson in the Rocky Mountain News. He followed up with this one about the landmark CA decision.
We also received coverage from the New York Times.
We've included two videos below, one of the action itself and the other from the Colorado 2031 public affairs program hosted by anchor Ron Zapollo on Fox 31.