Even before Colorado became known as the “Hate State,” the LGBTQ+ community of Colorado Springs feared for their homes, their livelihoods, their lives. While Colorado for Family Values proposed and argued for the amendment with calls for “no special rights” from the Springs, LGBTQ+ people living here had been facing the reality of having no protection from discrimination in every sphere of life. LGBTQ+ people in the Springs were regularly fired and evicted without cause, denied medical care, and space to practice their faiths without facing bigotry. Just existing visibly in public at all was dangerous. In the face of this fact of life, the Springs LGBTQ+ community built support networks throughout the city, creating places for each other where people could feel safe and find the resources and support they needed to live and thrive, as much as they could. When Amendment 2 was proposed, it did not go unopposed in the Springs. Many of those support networks, like Pikes Peak Metropolitan Community Church and the Springs chapter of the Gender Identity Center of Colorado, joined the statewide effort opposing Amendment 2 during the 1992 election, offering their support for the statewide push by Equal Protections for Colorado (also known as EPOC) or campaigning in the Springs themselves.
When Amendment 2 was passed on November 3rd, 1992, the community felt those familiar fears surge. Many, including Regina DiPadova, the founder of Inside Out, remember how that fear made them want to withdraw and hide in the immediate aftermath. By coming together with friends and allies to grieve, that fear soon became drive to make sure that Amendment 2 wouldn’t stand. By December, grassroots groups like Ground Zero were forming to help direct the national boycott of Colorado that Amendment 2 had caused and to protest in the Springs directly, and allies from outside the LGBTQ+ community were joining as well. Citizens Project, a group originally created as a watchdog on religious influence in schools, became a key source of information throughout the fight against Amendment 2, and Ground Zero joined the Springs’ chapters of the NAACP and AIM in a coalition to protest discrimination, which marched through Colorado Springs in January of 1993.
Over the next three years, Ground Zero turned its focus away from the boycott, as legal challenges proceeded through the courts, instead working to foster connection and understanding between the Springs’ LGBTQ+ community and the city overall alongside organizations like Inside Out and Citizens Project. In 1996 the US Supreme Court ruled Amendment 2 unconstitutional in Romer v. Evans, but the work to make Colorado Springs a place where LGBTQ+ Coloradans can thrive has continued. Citizens Project, Inside Out, Pikes Peak Metropolitan Community Church, and so many others in the Springs persist to this day, creating and strengthening support networks, campaigning for civil protections and rights, encouraging community engagement, and trying to make the Springs safer, maintaining the hope that Colorado Springs can, and will, be more than the birthplace of the “Hate State.”