11/27/2009
By Ernest Luning THE COLORADO STATESMAN
As next year’s legislative session approaches, state lawmakers and interest groups are lining up to tackle a problem that has been on the back burner for nearly a decade before finally catching fire this year: how to regulate growers and distributors of medical marijuana.
The vacancy committee in State Senate District 31 chose Pat Steadman, a lobbyist for liberal causes and openly gay man, to finish out the term of Jennifer Veiga on the 13th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling invalidating anti-gay Colorado Amendment 2, a decision that inspired Steadman to enter politics and upon which he worked. He will need to run in 2010 for the remaining two years of Jennifer Veiga’s term, and then in 2012 for the next full four years of the term.
October 7, 2008 By Libby Post
Since Colorado’s Amendment 2 changed the state constitution to prohibit new laws to protect lesbians and gays from discrimination in 1992, LGBT activist Pat Steadman has been at the forefront of Colorado’s equal rights battle. Now, for the first time since that year, Colorado looks like it could well swing Democrat in November’s election, thanks in large part to the work of Steadman and Equal Rights Colorado.
