Civil unions go from radical to moderate
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“It’s just everyday business,” said Brattleboro Town Clerk Annette Cappy, who a few minutes after midnight on July 1, 2000, became the first Vermont clerk to issue a gay couple a license for a civil union. Last year her office dispensed 185 civil union licenses and 318 marriage licenses.
Just four years ago, civil unions for gay couples were considered a positively radical idea. Now, they are practically routine in Vermont.
In fact, in some parts of the country, civil unions have become the moderate fallback position in the nation’s growing debate over gay marriage.
Massachusetts politicians, including Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, have searched for a way to institute civil unions and thwart a ruling by the state’s highest court granting gay couples the right to marry. Similarly, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry opposes gay marriage but would support civil unions.
Nor did civil unions doom former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, as some feared would happen to Dean for signing the law.
Vermont officials are amazed at the shift in political reality.
“Now our `radical’ civil union thing is the compromise proposal for moderates,” said Attorney General William Sorrell.
Vermont lawmakers adopted civil unions a few months after the state Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the rights and benefits of marriage. The civil unions law gave gay couples all of the more than 300 rights available under state law to married couples.
It was the first time any state government had officially sanctioned same-sex relationships, and so far no other state has adopted civil unions.
The issue caused a political backlash in Vermont at the time. But now, even some state legislators who were voted out of office because of their support for civil unions have gotten elected again.
Vermont Gov. James Douglas, a Republican, said in 2000 that the Legislature was moving too quickly in approving civil unions. But now he opposes a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
Civic dialogue also has returned to normal.
Linda Weiss, a justice of the peace in Corinth, a community at the heart of the civil unions opposition movement four years ago, said many of her conservative neighbors have let go of their anger.
“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,'” said Weiss, who had a civil union ceremony with her partner more than three years ago.
Across the country, bills similar to Vermont’s civil unions law have been introduced, but none has been voted on. Politicians are taking another look at civil unions, though, because of the Massachusetts furor and because cities and counties from San Francisco and Portland, Ore., to New Paltz, N.Y., have begun issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of the law.
The political landscape has shifted so much that for some gay couples, civil unions are not nearly enough anymore.
Weiss said she and her partner are thinking about getting married in Massachusetts.
“Because marriage is happening, civil unions feel like a little play marriage,” she said. “It does seem less-than.”