Ten Years ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … State Rep. Kevin Lundberg called the debate over a ban on same-sex marriages in Colorado “the most significant domestic issue of the decade.” The Berthoud Republican wouldn’t budge when House Democratic Caucus Chair Angie Paccione asked if he really meant that the issue trumped the state’s fiscal crisis, health care, education or jobs. “Either marriage is between a man and a woman exclusively or anything goes,” he said. Research cited by both supporters and opponents of the same-sex marriage ban was conflicting, although a Norwegian sociologist argued that marriage itself “has become an increasingly empty institution and no longer as seen as a mandatory entrance to adult life, sexual life and parenthood.” Amending the state constitution to read that marriage is only between one man and one woman, Lundberg said, is the “only appropriate direction.” Lundberg allies Reps. Keith King and Jim Welker agreed, with King suggesting that the marriage amendment will save the state prison system from having problems and “save us money in the School Finance Act in the way we fund at-risk issues.” Welker wanted to know where the state would “draw the line” if gay marriage wasn’t banned. Why, a 9-year-old girl in India married a stray dog and a Boulder man once tried to marry his horse, Welker said. “Oh, come on, Jim!” Paccione responded. Family values weren’t under attack, she said, adding, “Before 1967, interracial couples like my mother and father could not marry. … There was a time when we said the same thing about whites and blacks.”…

… U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar briefed reporters about his whirlwind tour of war-torn Baghdad at the Democrat’s brand-new offices overlooking the Platte River in Denver. As part of a congressional delegation, Salazar visited Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Georgia, Ukraine and France in 10 days. “Iraq and the other emerging democracies have some hopeful signs and also some very difficult challenges ahead,” he said, adding that the cease-fire in Israel was “very fragile.” The highlight of the trip was speaking with U.S. soldiers at a camp in Kuwait, he said. Morale was good among U.S. soldiers, Salazar noted. “They believe that what is happening in the country itself – what you sometimes don’t see on television – is positive.” The trip included a meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko, who appeared “remarkably upbeat despite still bearing evidence of the dioxin poisoning he suffered last September.” As for the war in Iraq, Salazar said he hadn’t changed his mind. He said he believed that the Bush administration made “significant mistakes” getting into the conflict but that the United States is committed and has to finish what it started. America can’t abandon the broken and battered country, Salazar concluded.

One Hundred Years ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Relief was in sight for the unemployed of Colorado – most of them coal miners who lost their jobs during the recent strike – after introduction of a House resolution allowing the state to borrow money to put the men to work rebuilding roads. An anticipated $350,000, funded by a half-mill levy “for good roads,” wouldn’t be collected until the following year, but the state could borrow it at small expense, backers said. The measure was endorsed by Gov. George Carlson, a Republican, and the governor’s committee on the unemployed, which counted Alexander R.J. Radford, president of the Trinidad Chamber of Commerce, as a member. It was created “to prepare a plan for finishing as much work as possible for the miners who were thrown out of employment by the strike and such other men as are unable to make a living.” Radford and the Las Animas County commissioners had been employing several hundred men near Trinidad to improve the highways for 20 cents an hour. “In that way they earn enough to keep their families from absolute wants. They are paid in orders upon merchants for supplies, and these orders are redeemed by the county commissioners.”

… In other news, Benjamin F. Stapleton was named postmaster in Denver, starting his new position on April 1. Chicken thieves were reportedly busy in Fort Collins, Grand Junction farmers had signed up with the weather bureau to issue frost warnings, and more than 384 acres of choice irrigated land near Denver was sold to an Alabama capitalist by the name of John L. Brock for $38,000. The Colorado House was holding three daily sessions in order to finish business by April 10, and Weld County had signed a contract to build a new courthouse for $137,355. A brewery worker shot himself to death in a Denver rooming house, reportedly in a state of despondence because the state had gone “dry” in the last election. San Francisco officially asked Denver, its sister city, to designate the ninth anniversary of the great earthquake and fire on April 18 as a “thanksgiving day to commemorate the triumphs of the pursuits of peace.” Mrs. Elizabeth Kent Richardson, mother of George E. Richardson, superintendent of the county poor farm, died at her son’s home in Henderson just shy of her 96th birthday. The United States Attorney General sent a telegram to U.S. Marshall of Colorado Dewey C. Bailey informing him that he will not vacate his office on April 1 because his successor, state Sen. Samuel J. Burris, would not be ready to take office until the Legislature adjourns later in the month., Colorado electors were going to have a chance to declare their preference in the next general election whether to call a constitutional convention, “if plans of Republican and Democrat leaders in the Legislature do not miscarry.”

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com