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The Denver Post recently referred to 5280‘s February profile of Bob Beauprez, the Republican candidate for governor.
A February issue of 5280 magazine paraphrased Beauprez as saying he “rejects the idea of same-sex marriage. He’s okay with same-sex ‘unions,’ but he believes ‘that marriage is between a man and a woman.”‘
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The Post didn’t bother to contact us when preparing the article (or in the week since its publication). If they had, we would have happily shared this transcript from Max Potter’s interview with Beauprez:
Q: Can you explain to me your position on same-sex marriages. I appreciate the importance of marriage — I’ve married for ten years myself — but I could care less if a gay couple gets married.
Beauprez: Sure, I’d be glad to explain. I don’t pretend to understand the homosexuality thing. And plainly I don’t have a huge problem with it. I’ve hired, at my [bank], there’s been a number of gays, lesbians. I didn’t know when I hired them. I mean, how do you know? You find out afterward. To the person, they’ve been great employees. Wonderful employees. I’ve given three eulogies in my life: my dad, my mother in law, and a dear friend of mine who happened to be gay and happened to die of HIV-AIDs. A very good friend of mine. I’m gonna leave that whole thing to a bigger judge than me.
Where I come down is that some things in our society are fairly absolute. Up isn’t down. Black isn’t white. Water isn’t land. And for me the definition of marriage is traditional enough, ancient enough, ingrained enough in our society that when we say marriage it’s fairly specific. If we want to talk about some kind of a relationship between two people that isn’t man and woman, and what we think of as the traditional marriage union, I’m willing to talk about that.
Q: So it’s the semantics of the word marriage?
Beauprez: It is… I have no problem [with homosexuals]. In fact, I made a loan to two guys. I have no problem with the owning property thing. I want an insurance policy and you’re the beneficiary, you’re my partner, it’s between you and him. I don’t have any problem with that. And I know that’s not the case for everybody. I mean some, it’s the homosexual thing that’s going to destroy our society. I don’t go there. For me it’s the word. It’s one of those absolute definitions.
