When measured on the civil rights yardstick set by progressive states like Massachusetts, Connecticut or California, the recent breakthroughs in Colorado might seem modest. After all, when Democrat Bill Ritter signed into law a ban on job discrimination against those of us who're gay or transgender and signed a bill giving gay partners the right to be legal co-parents, his governor's pen was hardly going where no governor's pen had gone before.

Ritter's signatures made Colorado the 20th state to outlaw anti-gay job discrimination, the 12th to include anti-transgender job bias and among about two dozen states that extend legal protections to children lucky enough to have two loving parents, regardless of their parents' orientation. (Sadly, Michigan has no statewide job or second-parent protections.)

But Colorado is no ordinary state, and victories there carry special symbolic significance.

In 1992, voters in Colorado, which had become headquarters for a number of anti-gay organizations, passed the infamous Amendment 2: It created two classes of citizens -- gays and everybody else -- by prohibiting all state and local officials from doing anything to protect gay people from discrimination.

The sweeping, first-of-its-kind state constitutional amendment got Colorado dubbed the "hate state" and cost it $40 million in lost convention business and tourism. Ultimately, in 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court thundered that Colorado could not make its gay citizens "a stranger to its laws," and for the first time acknowledged that gay Americans do indeed have rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Election makes difference

Fast forward a decade: "What a difference an election makes," quips Pat Steadman, a lobbyist for Equal Rights Colorado, when asked about the building blocks for this year's towering breakthroughs. "We have a new governor, and it is a new day in Colorado."

Ritter was swept into office with 57 percent of the vote, replacing term-limited Republican Gov. Bill Owens.

The Democratic-controlled state Legislature had passed the jobs bill twice before, and Owens vetoed it each time. The co-parenting measure passed for the first time this year.

"Colorado has come a long way," brags state Sen. Jennifer Veiga, Colorado's only openly gay legislator and champion of both bills. In addition to having a gay-friendly governor, Veiga credits "persistence," "education" and the gay activism triggered by hateful Amendment 2.

Other political insiders point to the creative educational and political campaigns hatched and bankrolled by philanthropist Tim Gill, a gay software mogul.

But while the national symbolic importance of Colorado's recent progress is huge, the state still has far to go. After all, just last year, Colorado voters passed a constitutional amendment restricting marriage to heterosexual couples and defeated a proposal to create domestic partnerships.

Political insiders expect the legislature will take a breather before trying to enact piecemeal couples' benefits, such as inheritance and hospital visitation rights, and protections against discrimination in housing and public accommodations.

"We will make some modest gains and solve some practical problems," lobbyist Steadman predicts. "But full equality is going to happen in other states first, and Colorado will catch up to the fact."

Colorado is headed in the right direction. Finally, it's setting a positive example.