First, I don't agree that marriage is just between a man and a woman. If I had my way, gays would have the same marriage rights as straights. But I cannot allow Howard Dean to be essentially equated with Jerry Falwell or Rick Santorum. Here's a little reminder of who this man is:
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"I believe that because until every human being is treated with dignity, because they are a human being, and not because they belong in some category, then every American and every Vermonter is poorer because of that. This bill enriches not just the very small percentage of gay and lesbian Vermonters who take advantage of this partnership and get the rights that the court has determined that they are due. I believe this bill enriches all of us, as we look with new eyes at a group of people who have been outcasts for many, many generations." - Howard Dean
http://astroqueer.tripod.com/charts/civil-unions.html-----------------------------
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/gay_marriage/vermont.htmlIn the end, both the state Senate and House adopted a bill and Democratic Gov. Howard Dean signed it into law, setting July 1, 2000 as the day it would go into effect.
It was also what Dean later described as "the most important event in my political life."
"I never got to have a discussion with myself about whether this made any political sense or not because I knew that whether I was going to win the next election or lose it, that every day I was going to have to look at myself in the mirror and decide what kind of human being I was," Dean told Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press.At midnight on July 1, the nation's first civil union ceremony was held in Brattleboro, Vt., where the town clerk opened the office late at night to accommodate the event. As of the beginning of March 2004, town clerks throughout the tiny New England state have issued some 6,800 civil unions. But of those, the vast majority -- more than 5,700 -- went to people from outside Vermont.
In the days and weeks after July 1, hundreds of couples flooded the state with requests for a union.
....
The social and political ramifications for Vermont, though, ran deeper than the legal snags. The passage of the nation's first civil union law led to the formation of angry counter-groups working under the banner of "Take Back Vermont."
In the fall of 2000, Democrats lost control of the state Senate, in part due to the vote.
Dean, who had cruised to multiple reelections, narrowly fended off a campaign by a leading opponent to civil unions."We're the laughingstock of the country," Dick Lambert, who first created the "Take Back Vermont" signs and sold 5,000 out of his garage within three months of the law taking effect, told The Washington Post. "They think we're the gay state, but this has nothing to do with us."
But the uprising appeared to be short-lived. Although several legislators were defeated in 2000, several had won their seats back by 2004. Town clerks and justices of the peace have also seen communities begin to accept the civil union concept that once outraged them.
"Although there's still a fair amount of grumbling, there's much more of an attitude of, 'Well, if that's what they want to do, let them,'" Linda Weiss, a justice of the peace in Corinth, Vt., told the AP.
Gov. James Douglas, a Republican elected after Dean retired to run for president in 2004, reflects this shift in opinion. In 2000, Douglas said he believed the legislature was moving too quickly to invent the civil union. Now, he endorses the law, and is opposed to a federal constitutional amendment on gay marriage.
"I think most Vermonters have come to accept it, to live with it," Douglas said recently to a group of reporters.
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http://www.vtfreetomarry.org/notenough.php (These guys don't believe civil unions go far enough, yet...)
Vermont's civil union law was groundbreaking. At the time it passed, in April 2000, it shot Vermont to the head of the American pack with regard to protections for gay families, and close to the international lead. For that, we had reason to be proud and to celebrate.
Many in our community will never forget the year 2000, nor should we, with its turmoil, struggles and celebrations as the legislature answered the Baker Decision. But the civil union law resulted from a painful and difficult compromise between genuine equality and no rights at all. As we celebrated civil unions in our community we embraced what we had, instead of what was missing.
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