We were able to get the judge to force them to pay restitution. By the time the police got there - which was 45 minutes later - and this on East Colfax Avenue - there was a crowd in the streets who just pointed to the car and said ‘it’s them!’ The police did arrest them and the judge was just going to let them go … for just kids fooling around and having a good time downtown. There were people inside the building at the time this was going on. “There was a time when some young men in a car were driving back and forth in front of the center with a pellet gun and shooting out the windows. And Nash can hardly believe it, as he remembers what it was like to be gay in Denver nearly four decades ago when he worked at the Gay Community Center in the city. Back in the late 1970s, he wrote a presentation for the Carter Administration in which he argued that the government should legally recognize same-sex unions.
In the eyes of Phil Nash, a longtime gay rights activist, Denver has come a long way in the last 36 years. An early gay rights protest in Denver on the Capitol lawn.
