Jared Polis never thought The Hate State label fit.
The future governor was a high school student living in Boulder when Amendment 2 passed, just a year too young to vote himself. But he was old enough to pay attention.
“I certainly remember the media calling us the Hate State,” he said. “It didn't feel good to be called that.”
People were focused on the wrong thing, he said. Despite that election day in 1992, teenage Polis viewed Colorado as a place moving to protect people’s rights.
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“I was proud of communities like Boulder and Denver that had, you know, clearly came down on the side of equality."
Amendment 2 was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996, an appropriate date to mark Colorado’s political progression from the so-called “Hate State,” to a place where Polis himself – the nation’s first openly-gay governor – is a symbol of its commitment to equality.
The governor, though, tends to downplay the superlative’s significance.
“I think it’s been really a blessing for it to be almost an afterthought for people,” he said. “They just want to make sure I’m an effective governor for everybody.”
Sitting in a conference room near his office at the State Capitol, Polis describes Amendment 2 as a “blip on the map.”
“I think we were more inclusive than many states in that we had major cities that had anti-discrimination laws,” he said. “We were the first state to have same-sex marriage. We had vibrant LGBT communities in large parts of our state, especially in the Denver area. So, [the hate state label] was unfortunate.”
Colorado today stands among the most welcoming states in the country, he said.
"I mean, we're getting LGBT refugees from Florida and Texas, and it's sad that in this day and age that's the case," he said.
Colorado’s momentum around protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ people gained steam when Polis was elected in 2018. With a Democratic legislature, attorney general and secretary of state, Polis used some of his political power to do the very thing people behind Amendment 2 wanted to stop and prevent – protecting the rights of queer and trans people.
"I think it's been gradual progress,” he said. “I mean, certainly banning so-called conversion therapy for underage people who were forced to go to very traumatic treatments, where they were often traumatized for life, that no longer occurs in our state. We've made a lot of progress with very strong anti-discrimination protections.”
But the path away from the Hate State has been rocky, and sometimes tragic. Two years ago this month, five people were killed during a shooting at an LGBTQ+ bar in Colorado Springs. Meanwhile, during this political season, rhetoric against queer people is on the rise.
"It's become popular on the Right particularly to attack transgender Americans, and almost like they treat it like it's somehow an ideology. You know, there's no gay ideology. There's no transgender ideology. It's just the diversity of the human experience."Gov. Jared Polis
“It's become popular on the Right particularly to attack transgender Americans, and almost like they treat it like it's somehow an ideology,” Polis said. “You know, there's no gay ideology. There's no transgender ideology. It's just the diversity of the human experience.”
Polis is concerned that states like Colorado will have to do more to protect people’s rights going forward.
Last year, the US Supreme Court opened the door to overturning some LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination protections when it ruled that a web designer’s company could refuse to work with same-sex couples.
"We're losing a lot of the national protections that we wanted to take for granted, leaving it up to the role of states like Colorado, like many other states.”
The Hate State stuff, he said, is over. But that does not mean everything is uniform everywhere.
“It is still tough to grow up gay and in some conservative parts of rural Colorado, I’m sure it is. There are areas of our state where it’s tough to be different,” he said. “And there’s other areas where, again, I think your identity is very much affirmed and you are able to be who you are.”
Colorado’s acceptance of others, he said, “ties into our western culture, the frontier spirit of individual individualism.”
"We've certainly evolved a lot from where we were in 1992 in many ways, and I think we're the state that celebrates individuality and really respects people for who they are.”
