Meet the N.M. County Clerk Who Started the Same-Sex Marriage License Hullaballoo
Ellins, 75, noted that his interest in supporting same-sex marriage is nothing new. A non-native New Mexican, Ellins called himself a civil libertarian who identified as a “Rockefeller Republican” until 2000. (“There ain’t any of those anymore,” he noted.) He grew up in Manhattan and went to Columbia University for both college and law school. He also served in the Navy. He came to New Mexico by way of Colorado where he first worked as a senior group counsel for JC Penney Company in Denver. Ellins eventually joined the University of Colorado and became chairman of the Board of Regents in 1989.
During his time on the board, in 1985, he pushed for an amendment to the university’s rules that made sexual orientation “a protected class for students, faculty and staff.” Such language is standard at colleges around the country now, but at the time, Ellins was ahead of the curve. “So I just didn’t come to this party at the end. In fact, I was at this party before it began,” he said.
“Then finally in 2002 my wife got tired of snow, which I happen to love, and we looked in Arizona and New Mexico and we decided Las Cruces is a good place [to retire],” Ellins said. “It’s a college town. I worked in Boulder, Colorado which was a college environment so it worked out for us.”
Local Democrats tapped Ellins out of retirement (which, Ellins notes, he “didn’t enjoy anyway”) to first run for elections supervisor shortly after he moved to New Mexico. He then decided to run for Doña Ana County clerk in 2008 on the Democratic ticket. Ellins’s clerk position is term limited and he says he doesn’t know what he plans to do next.
In the meantime, Ellins’s decision on marriage licenses may change things dramatically in the state, no matter the outcome of the yet-to-be decided Supreme Court case. Conservative Republicans in the state could push for a same-sex marriage ban on the November 2014 ballot if the Supreme Court court sides with gay and lesbian couples. But Ellins doesn’t think that will happen and argues that under the U.S. Constitution, same-sex marriage is legal, regardless of what state law says.
“Nobody voted on whether I can get married, and I don’t think anybody voted on whether you can get married, and you don’t vote civil rights issues because the purpose of the 14th Amendment is to protect minorities,” Ellins said. “And people with that sexual orientation are minorities. So you don’t put that to a vote. It flies in the face of jurisprudence since the late 19th century.”
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