After one judge struck down Colorado’s same-sex marriage ban and another allowed the rogue Boulder County clerk to continue issuing licenses to couples last week, Attorney General John Suthers — the man charged with defending the ban — was standing firm.

Several elected officials, including Gov. John Hickenlooper, urged him to back down. But Suthers instead publicly worried that the Boulder ruling, which spurred the Denver and Pueblo county clerks to start issuing licenses, would create legal chaos.

He vowed to seek “resolution by the state’s highest court.”

Yet a tidal wave of court rulings striking down similar bans in the past year has given gay marriage indisputable momentum. For advocates — and for even some opponents — of same-sex marriage, it now has the air of inevitability, making efforts such as Suthers’ seem futile.

Nationally, some attorneys general have abandoned defenses of similar bans as they’ve grappled, in some ways, with the same pressure faced decades ago by officials who defended state laws barring blacks and whites from marrying.

“We all know how this is going to end,” said state Sen. Pat Steadman, a Denver Democrat. “What’s left to argue about?”

Nineteen states allow same-sex marriage, and decisions overturning bans in nine more states are on hold, pending appeal. Since the U.S. Supreme Court last year struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, various judges have struck down similar state bans 16 times. Not one has upheld a ban.

The Adams County judge who struck down Colorado’s ban Wednesday issued an immediate stay, but that didn’t matter to at least two county clerks who seized on the Boulder ruling. Another challenge to the ban is pending in U.S. District Court.

Suthers, a Republican, is declining interviews, but those who know him — including some who support same-sex marriage — say recent criticism misses the point. Suthers is a politician, they say, whose law-and-order background makes him take his formal legal role of vigorously defending Colorado’s laws seriously.

“I’ve always regarded John Suthers as one of the most principled elected officials that we’ve ever seen in Colorado,” said Dick Wadhams, a former state GOP chairman who foresees the legalization of same-sex marriage. “His character is absolutely sterling. … He’s conducted himself and his offices by following the letter of the law, and not by the whims of politics.”

Just a year ago, some point out, Suthers was under fire from the other side of the gay-rights divide.

The attorney general’s office pressed a civil rights discrimination complaint against a suburban Denver bakery for refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. Suthers prevailed, but not before being vilified by religious-rights advocates who backed the baker.

Nancy Leong, a professor at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, said the marriage cases put Suthers in a difficult position. “The question is, who is his client?” Leong said. “Is it the people as they were in 2006, when they voted the ban into place? Or is it the people now?”

Recent polls of Colorado voters have found support for same-sex marriage ranging from 56 percent to 61 percent.

“I don’t think there are easy answers to those questions,” Leong said.

But for Alexander Hornaday, a Denver attorney who knows Suthers and also supports the legalization of same-sex marriage, the answers aren’t tough.

Although he’s vice president of the Colorado Log Cabin Republicans, which represents gay conservatives, Hornaday said Suthers is fulfilling an important role — one that ultimately could result in a strong legal precedent in favor of same-sex marriage.

“His job is to defend the laws of Colorado,” Hornaday said. “(The amendment) was properly passed, even though it was a bad law. I’d like him to defend the law and then lose, of course.”

But others say there’s no point in appealing.

“Amendment 43 will fall, and his continued fight is wasting taxpayer dollars and placing him on the wrong side of history,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, through a spokesman.

Calls on Suthers to stop defending the marriage amendment also have come from Democratic elected officials such as Hickenlooper, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, all three Democratic U.S. representatives and state House Speaker Mark Ferrandino.

But GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez and U.S. Reps. Doug Lamborn and Scott Tipton, both Republicans, said through spokesmen that they support a continued defense of the amendment, which 56 percent of voters approved in 2006.

Suthers has been outspoken, even penning an op-ed in The Washington Post in February that chided some of his colleagues for stepping out of line.

“One must be cynical,” Suthers wrote, “when an attorney general refuses to defend a controversial law as ‘clearly unconstitutional’ when there is no binding precedent and it is apparent to most knowledgeable people that the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to decide the case on a 5-4 vote.”

Suthers has served as an elected district attorney in Colorado Springs, chief of the Colorado Department of Corrections and a presidentially appointed U.S. Attorney.

In 2005, Gov. Bill Owens appointed him attorney general, and he subsequently won two elections. He leaves office in January.

The candidates hoping to succeed him have squabbled over the right way to handle the marriage cases. For months, Democrat Don Quick has urged Suthers to drop his defense. But Republican Cynthia Coffman, Suthers’ chief deputy, said the attorney general has a vital role to play until higher courts settle the legal arguments over marriage.

Elsewhere, several attorneys general facing marriage-ban challenges have agreed with Suthers.

But not all. The top state lawyers for Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia — all Democrats — have stopped defending their states’ bans in court, saying last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling changed the equation.

Two Republican governors — Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania — have taken the same position.

In Colorado, Carrie Gordon Earll, senior policy director for Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, commended Suthers for upholding his office’s duty — “unlike other elected officials who are tossing these state laws aside.”

While Suthers’ office considers its options, three counties continue issuing marriage licenses that are cloaked in uncertainty.

“We are not going to stop until the state recognizes our marriage,” said Michelle Alfredsen. She and her wife, Wendy, were the first couple to receive a marriage license from the Boulder clerk’s office.

“We are not afraid,” she said. “All of this gives us more strength and courage.”