Gay unions near legality in Vermont
Religion Today, April 20, 2000
A bill giving homosexuals in Vermont nearly all the rights of married couples won final approval in the state’s Senate April 19.
The bill now returns to the House to consider minor changes. If it is passed and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Howard Dean, as expected, it will be the closest thing in the United States to gay marriage.
The bill creates “civil unions” in the state. Same-sex couples could apply for a license from a town clerk and have their civil union certified by a justice of the peace, judge, or clergyman. To break up a civil union, partners would go through Family Court, just as when married couples divorce.
Homosexuals who establish a civil union would become eligible for the hundreds of state benefits given to married couples. This includes the right to buy and sell property, obtain certain tax breaks, make medical decisions for each other, inherit estates, and oversee burials. Responsibilities would include accepting joint debts of their partners.
The couples would not be entitled to federal benefits available to married couples in such areas as taxes, Social Security, and immigration rights. Unlike marriage, civil unions might not be recognized in other states. More than 30 states have tried to prevent such unions by passing the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman and allows states not to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.
Vermont legislators defeated two proposed constitutional amendments this week that were designed to outlaw gay marriage. One would have defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
The second would have overturned a state Supreme Court ruling in December that found that gay couples were unconstitutionally denied the benefits of marriage. In that decision, the high court told the Vermont Legislature it must remedy the situation, but left it up to the lawmakers to decide whether to allow gay marriages or to create some other kind of domestic partnership.
People packed into the cramped Senate chamber and spilled into the hallways as senators debated whether civil unions would threaten traditional marriage, news reports said. Opponents of civil unions wore white ribbons while supporters of civil unions wore pink stickers.
Sen. Ben Ptashnik, a Democrat, criticized religious leaders who oppose civil unions. Ptashnik, whose parents were held in the Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II, said the vilification of Jews by other religious leaders had contributed to the Holocaust. “I don’t believe that any of us have a lock on morality,” he said. “Nobody can really say they speak for God.”
Sen. James P. Leddy, also a Democrat, read aloud a letter from a 78-year-old woman who had eight children and had been told 26 years ago that one son was gay. “He knew and we know that he was just plain born gay,” she wrote. “I can only say, God blessed us with eight children and my God made no mistake when he blessed us with homosexuals and when He gave us our gay son.”
Homosexuality “runs counter to natural law,” said Sen. John Crowley, a Republican from Rutland, adding that he had not seen any evidence that homosexuality was anything other than a chosen lifestyle. He said that extending legal benefits to gay and lesbian couples would encourage homosexuality, and that is “not in the best interest of our society,” the Rutland Herald said.
Not only traditional marriage has been harmed, but democracy itself, since the vote for civil unions goes “against the heart-held desires of a majority of Vermonters,” the Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Burlington said. Polls show that most Vermonters oppose legalization of same-sex unions.
Craig Bensen, an evangelical pastor and vice president of Take It to the People, a Vermont coalition that opposes gay marriage, said more Republican legislators may be elected in November if voters are angered by passage of civil unions, The Washington Post said.
Sen. Richard W. Sears Jr., a Democrat who said he had gotten nasty calls at home over the bill, said the state is “working through a lot of fear – and anger – about the unknown.” He said political leaders had a huge job ahead to try to heal the state over the issue.