DU staffer Kate Burns and professor Sheila Schroeder were found guilty of trespassing at the Denver County Court on May 7.

Their trial stemmed from an incident last September when the couple refused to leave the Clerk and Recorder Office after being denied a marriage license. The couple staged a sit-in until they were arrested at 5 p.m.

County Judge James Breese sentenced the women to each serve 28 hours of community service and each pay $41 in court costs.

Kate Burns, a digital media studies program assistant, said she does not take the conviction lightly.

“It’s not pleasant to have any conviction on one’s record; however, I am most willing to serve any sentence in order to stand up for justice in this matter,” Burns said.

Burns and Mass Communications Professor Schroeder have been a couple for six years. Burns says she and Schroeder “study the principles of nonviolent resistance as articulated by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and other civil rights leaders, and they guide our efforts to make our community more just.”

“The Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells [her] is unjust, and who attempts to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice . . . is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law,'” Burns said.

The denial for the marriage license they requested in Sept. 2007 was based on Colorado Amendment 43, which declares marriage to be a union between a man and a woman.

Burns said the Bill of Rights should celebrate the diversity of its citizens, and agrees that men and women should be able to practice their beliefs to marry without criticisms but that she and Schroeder deserve the same treatment.

Burns remembers that day in September as a day in which she felt “compelled” to stand up for her beliefs against what she considers to be an unjust law.

“We hoped [that day] to change the hearts and minds of those opposed to same-gender marriage, to encourage them to think about what it would be like if they were in our shoes,” Burns said.

Burns said the guilty verdict will not inhibit her and Schroeder’s willingness to fight for legislation that allows gays and lesbians to marry, and not solely for their own personal stakes.

“Denying loving and committed same-gender couples the right to marry is part of a shameful tradition of discrimination; we will [one] day also find banning same-gender couples from marriage to be abhorrent,” Burns said.