My decision (or need) to flee the town where I was raised for the refuge of the desert town of Albuquerque did not come impulsively. It was gradual and built slowly over several years.
Colorado Springs is gorgeous and unique. With the impressive Rocky Mountains as a backdrop, the town is home to resplendent, natural beauty—magnificent things like the Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, and endless rolling hills blanketed with trees and greenery. Founded in 1871 as a resort town and situated, officially, at 6,008 ft above sea level it has provided inspiration to many, such as Katharine Lee Bates, who, in 1893, wrote the words to “America the Beautiful” after returning from a trip to the top of Pikes Peak.
I am fortunate to have lived in Colorado Springs. It is an indescribably beautiful place where the air is clean, the sky is blue, and the weather is, usually, very wonderful.
Why the hell would I want to leave such a place?
Indeed, there are worse places to live, but it has its problems too—problems I’ve helplessly watched develop over the last couple decades.
The first thing is the growth of the city, and the total lack of planning for that growth. I was born in Colorado Springs in 1978 when the population was just over 200,000. At the time, the city’s economy was largely reliant on the military and its many bases in the area. Though today the town bears the moniker “Olympic City USA,” it would be three months after I was born that the United States Olympic Training Center relocated to Colorado Springs from New York.
In the 1980s, several high-tech manufacturing companies either started in or relocated to the area, and by the 1990s, the population had grown to over 280,000. Currently, it is well over 416,000.
My issue isn’t the number of residents in the city. Growth is good, I suppose, and this growth has brought the city a lot of new employment, shopping, and dining options. It’s also led to a ranking as one of the worst traffic-congested cities in the nation. The roadways simply cannot handle the volume of traffic. Roads throughout town are constantly under construction, or rather, reconstruction. The city’s leaders continually favor new development over infrastructure upgrades and don’t seem to factor in the need for roadways when green lighting new development. To this day, shockingly few roads exist that are wider than two lanes in both directions, and even the interstate is just now getting expanded. Yes, I said the interstate. Despite having almost 700,000 people in a metro area that spans 195 square miles, there is but one lone interstate highway that runs through town, and no major east-west route exists to help get around the city.
But I’m sure Colorado Springs is not the only place in the nation suffering from bad city planning or over development, so onto my second and main problem: The infestation of religion, uber-conservatives, and outright hate.
The decline began in the early 1990s as many religious organizations began to relocate to the Colorado Springs area—the most recognizable being Focus on the Family, which relocated to Colorado Springs in 1991 from Pomona, California.
Founded by James Dobson,1 who in his 2001 book “Bringing Up Boys” called homosexuality a “sexual identity disorder,” Focus on the Family came to Colorado Springs largely because the El Pomar Foundation gave them a grant which they used to purchase a huge plot of land on the city’s north side. Many other large religious groups followed as the area became more favorable for these kinds of organizations, and several homegrown organizations spouted as well, like invasive weeds in an otherwise pristine garden.
One of these homegrown organizations was Colorado for Family Values. Founded in 1991 by Kevin Tebedo and Tony Marco, the organization was originally called the Colorado Coalition for Family Values, but according to historian Randall Balmer in his book “Protestantism in America,” the group dropped “coalition” from the name after a radio talk show host said it sounded “Marxist.”
The obsequiously-not-Marxist Colorado for Family Values appointed local car-dealing pseudo-celebrity Will Perkins as chairman of its board. Perkins often and unabashedly shared his anti-gay views, and in 1997, he even staged a phony arrest while speaking at a national religious-right conference in Vail. The on-stage theatrics, he later admitted, were designed to dramatize an imagined threat to free speech by the “militant homosexual movement.”
Colorado for Family Values quickly gained acceptance from the growing evangelical community in Colorado Springs, and soon strengthened its alliance with fundamentalist Christian groups by adding prominent anti-gay people to its advisory and executive boards.
Along with several Focus on the Family employees, the advisory board also included former Sen. Bill Armstrong, who in a 1992 fund-raising letter for Colorado for Family Values described the AIDS epidemic as the “self-created miseries of pleasure-addicted gays,” and called on Coloradans to turn back “a very grave threat” from gays.
Other board members included Bill McCartney, the founder of an all-male Christian group called the Promise Keepers. At the time of his board service, McCartney was also the football coach at the University of Colorado, and during a 1992 speech at CU, he called homosexuality “an abomination.”
Colorado for Family Values didn’t hide its homophobic leanings. The group’s stated goal, as quoted in The New York Times in May 1992, was to “stop gay activists before they trample on your freedoms.”
Don’t we all feel safer now?
The Springs’ Problem Becomes the State’s Problem
While Focus on the Family moved to Colorado Springs the same year Colorado for Family Values formed, these names meant little to the average person in town, and even less to others in the state. Within a few months though, both names would become commonly known across a state, a state that would become known as “The Hate State” thanks to the legislative efforts of these organizations.
How this happened can seemingly be traced to an innocuous event inside the chambers of the Colorado Springs City Council in early 1991 when the city’s Human Relations Commission proposed that the city ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Perkins and Colorado for Family Values took note of the perceived threat and jumped into action. The ordinance did not pass, and in June, the city dissolved the 15-member commission, which had existed for three decades.
“The whole thrust of their ordinance was to achieve protected-class status for homosexual behavior,” Perkins later told Denver’s Westword.
Emboldened by this outcome, Perkins set his sights on the state level and Colorado for Family Values successfully gathered 16,000 signatures and got the No Protected Status for Sexual Orientation Amendment, commonly called Amendment 2, placed on the November 1992 ballot.
The group’s goal was to prevent homosexuals from gaining what it called “special rights.” The amendment’s wording stated that it would prohibit “the state of Colorado and any of its political subdivisions from adopting or enforcing any law or policy which provides that homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation, conduct, or relationships constitutes or entitles a person to claim any minority or protected status, quota preferences, or discrimination.”
By a final vote of 53 percent to 47 percent, Colorado voters passed Amendment 2.
Days after the amendment passed, many across the country began applying “The Hate State” moniker to Colorado. Others called for a boycott of the state.
Many in Colorado were not happy about the passage of the law though, especially those in cities like Denver and Aspen whose voters overwhelmingly opposed the amendment and whose local economies stood to be hit the hardest by a boycott.
Following the November election, thousands took to the streets of Denver to protest the amendment’s passage, including Gov. Roy Romer and Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, both Democrats.
Groups like The Americans for Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal Defense Fund, and the cities of Boulder, Aspen, and Denver fought the new law, and attorney Jean Dubofsky filed a motion in Denver District Court that sought an injunction.
On January 15, 1993, the day the new law was set to take effect, Judge Jeffrey Bayless granted a preliminary injunction. That injunction was later made permanent.
Years later, on May 20, 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Colorado’s Amendment 2 unconstitutional.
A Bad Rep
The efforts of Colorado for Family Values, though ultimately thwarted, brought negative attention to both Colorado Springs and the entire state of Colorado.
The nationwide bad publicity and calls for a boycott even cost Denver its chance at the national spotlight when producers of the “Cheers” spin-off “Frasier” moved the setting of the new show from their first choice of Denver, Colorado, to Seattle, Washington.
“We knew we didn’t want Frasier there anymore… We weren’t going to give Denver all this positive publicity,” Peter Casey, the show’s executive producer, told The Seattle Times in a 1993 interview.
Though the nickname of “The Hate State” eventually faded, evangelical Christians in Colorado Springs seemed to embrace the city’s newfound anti-gay reputation. The list of evangelical organizations located in town grew at a fast pace throughout the 1990s, and these groups constantly pushed their agendas in both the public and political arenas.
The city’s new regime was in place, and its new leader was set to claim his seat at the head of the table.
The Rise of Ted
A bright-faced 28-year-old Ted Haggard moved to Colorado Springs in 1984, seven years before Focus on the Family settled in the area.
Haggard soon started what would become the 11,000-plus member megachurch, New Life Church. Initially launched in his basement, the church later moved to a strip mall before ultimately buying a massive chunk of land on the city’s north side.
In 2003, Haggard became the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and he claimed in multiple interviews that he routinely spoke to the president of the United States.
When ol’ Teddy moved to town, he found what he called in an interview with National Public Radio a “pastor’s graveyard,” whatever the fuck that is. I lived in the Springs for years and never once saw an inordinate number of pastors in the cemeteries, but I’m wandering here…
Haggard went on to say that when he moved to Colorado Springs, the city was full of “pagan-style religions” and that only 10 percent of Colorado Springs’ citizens attended church. It’s vastly unclear where he got this figure.
Colorado Springs, he said in the January 2015 NPR interview, was ripe for a “spiritual transformation,” though many longtime residents were perfectly happy with Colorado Springs as it was.
The Fall of Ted
Haggard championed proposed state legislation in 2006 that would have outlawed gay marriage, and he often preached against homosexuality to his congregation, including in a scene from the 2006 film “Jesus Camp.” Later that year, Haggard—a husband and father to five children—was found to have a secret love of methamphetamines and gay sex.
Haggard’s fondness of things he often called sinful became apparent in November after a man came forward to say that over a three-year period, Haggard had paid him for sex and used meth with him. This understandably caused him to lose favor with folks like James Dobson and Will Perkins, forced him to resign from the church he founded, and cut his reign as de facto leader of the city’s (and the nation’s) evangelicals short.
Now Back to Our Show
I couldn’t tell you what happened to Will Perkins.2 Apparently, he’s still the chairman of Colorado for Family Values, but I don’t think anyone has heard a fucking peep from the group in years. Kevin Tebedo owns a roofing company and occasionally tries to poke his fat head into politics, such as his unsuccessful delegate run in 2009. Tony Marco, meanwhile, slithered into the shadows, as far as I can tell.
Teddy’s fall left James Dobson as the Unquestioned King of the People, or at least the religious people. The rest of us do what any sane person does: We listen to the crazy shit that comes out of his mouth and laugh accordingly.
The damage was done though. These groups, and their hateful ideas, also infected the local political system and forced out anyone who didn’t hold conservative viewpoints.
Today, the city’s government has no liberals in any position. This may sound like a utopia to many people, but without any counterpoint to the conservative beat, conservatives have unrestrained decision-making powers. In today’s Colorado Springs government, “liberal” basically means “moderate,” and there are only about two of those anywhere in City Hall.
The result of this one-sided governance could stand as a case study for what happens when a heavily conservative government is fully in charge. For one, you run out of money for everyday services, like trash cans in your parks, or lights on your streets.
Allow me to explain: A key agenda of any god-fearing conservative is to cut taxes, yes? And so, Colorado Springs’ leaders set out to do just that, but as it turns out, a city’s revenue is heavily dependent on taxes, and so with shockingly low taxes came shockingly low city coffers.
To adjust for massive budgetary shortfalls, the city’s leaders eliminated weekend bus service and sold nine buses. It laid off some police officers, sold the department’s three helicopters, slashed the budget for city parks by 75 percent, and removed trash cans from every park.
Then, instead of raising taxes—egad!—the city asked citizens who enjoyed lighted streets in their neighborhoods to “adopt” streetlights. The city then turned off one out of every three streetlights, the ones that hadn’t been matched with a resident willing to pay the $125 adoption fee. At the same time, the mayor was paid close to a hundred grand per year. The mayor’s chief of staff made twice as much.
For what it’s worth, the city saved around $1.25 million by turning off streetlights. That said, freed from the fear of electrocution, copper thieves hit hundreds of the disabled lights, and in the end, the city spent about $5 million to repair the lights, according to a 2017 Politico article.
The conservative politicians that allowed the town to fall into such a large pit of despair, while keeping taxes low, also allowed tax-exempt “nonprofit” groups like Focus on the Family and Colorado for Family Values to shape policy and laws in the city, and across the state.
Like anyone under attack, I had two choices: Fight or flight. My first instinct was to stand my ground and fight, and I did. For many years I voted, I protested, I donated to groups fighting the good fight. But, in the end, our forces were outnumbered. The people of this town didn’t listen to voices like mine when we protested, and so, as often is the case, they got the government they deserve,3 and built a dystopian nightmare. But hey, they accomplished all of this without raising taxes.
RML
Possum Hollow
July 2013
Notes:
1 Dobson left Focus on the Family in 2010 and subsequently founded Family Talk, a syndicated radio show
2 Perkins died in October 2019, at the age of 91
3 A lot has changed for the better since this was written, providing hope that hate and bad governance can in fact be defeated