Same-sex marriage in Vermont
Same-sex marriage has been legal in the U.S. state of Vermont since September 1, 2009. Vermont was the first state to introduce civil unions in July 2000, and the first state to introduce same-sex marriage by enacting a statute without being required to do so by a court decision. Same-sex marriage became legal earlier as the result of court decisions, not legislation, in four states: Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, and Iowa.
Background
Either by legislation or court decisions, Vermont was a leader among U.S. jurisdictions in protecting the rights of gays and lesbians in the 1990s. In 1990, it was one of the first states to enact hate crimes legislation that included sexual orientation. In 1992, it added sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination statute. In 1993, the Vermont Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling established second-parent adoption rights allowing someone in a same-sex relationship to adopt his or her partner's biological children. When the Vermont General Assembly reformed the state's adoption statute in 1995, it made same-sex couples eligible to adopt.Civil unions
''Baker v. Vermont''
On July 22, 1997, three same-sex couples sued the state and the jurisdictions that had denied them marriage licenses. They lost in the trial court on December 19. That court ruling that Vermont's statutes limiting marriage to different-sex couples were constitutional because they served the public interest by promoting "the link between procreation and child rearing".The Vermont Supreme Court heard the case on appeal and on December 20, 1999, ruled in Baker v. Vermont that the Vermont Constitution entitles same-sex couples to "the same benefits and protections afforded by Vermont law to married opposite-sex couples". The Court did not give the plaintiffs the relief they sought. Instead of ordering state officials to allow same-sex couples to marry, it invited the General Assembly to devise a solution:
The Court set no deadline, but suspended its judgement for "a reasonable period".
Mary Bonauto, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, later described how advocates for same-sex marriage struggled to understand how they had won the judgment but not the right to marry: "hey had this beautiful language in there about the humanity of gay people, but I couldn't believe they had done something that I thought was a political judgment. I had never heard of segregating the word marriage from its rights and protections."
Civil union legislation
When the House Judiciary Committee took up the question in February, 3 of its members favored same-sex marriage while 11 backed something equivalent that was discussed as a "civil rights package". The Committee's chairman said that only the latter could pass the Assembly. The state House of Representatives voted 76 to 69 in favor of legislation creating civil unions with the same legal rights and obligations as marriage on March 15, 2000. The legislation also defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Debate in the Senate, where the bill was modified, was restrained. The Senate also defeated two proposed constitutional amendments designed to nullify the Baker decision, one that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman and another that reserved to the Assembly all authority to define the benefits of marriage. The Senate passed the bill 19 to 11 on April 19, and the House passed it on April 25 on a 79 to 68 vote. Governor Howard Dean signed the legislation into law on April 26, without a public ceremony. Immediately after the signing, he held a press conference where he said:The New York Times called Vermont's civil unions "same-sex marriages in almost everything but the name". Bonauto called the legislation "breathtaking". She said out-of-state couples would want to take advantage of the law, even though its impact for them would only be symbolic.
Implementation
The debate on civil unions was acrimonious and deeply polarizing, touching every corner of the state and spurring a prominent popular backlash that began even before the legislation was signed under the slogan Take Back Vermont.As soon as civil union legislation was enacted, some clerks expressed reservations about participating. Gerry Longway, the Fairfield Town Clerk, said: "I'm not here to judge what people do, but I don't want to be forced to be part of it. It's like, if I don't believe in capital punishment, they're not going to make me pull the switch." As the July 1 start date approached, most seemed prepared to issue civil union licenses. On June 18, opponents of the legislation placed a full-page in the Burlington Free Press that described civil unions as the work of "the insufferable hubris of the narcissistic gay lobby that would place personal pleasures before public order." The first day for civil unions was a Saturday, when clerks offices are normally closed. A few opened because they had been asked to and a handful of licenses were issued and ceremonies held, including one for Holly Puterbaugh and Lois Farnham, plaintiffs in Baker, at the First Congregational Church in Burlington.
When the civil unions law went into effect on July 1, 2000, Vermont became the third U.S. state after Hawaii and California to offer legal status to same-sex couples, and the first to offer a civil union status encompassing the same legal rights and responsibilities as marriage.
2000 elections and aftermath
The November 2000 elections, with the Assembly and governorship at stake, became a referendum on civil unions. Opponents of civil unions adopted "Take Back Vermont" as their slogan and covered the landscape with their signs. It had been used previously to protest a property tax and represented anger at the state Government across an array of issues even as the campaign's focus was on civil unions. The campaign hoped to win control of both houses of the Vermont Assembly for the Republicans and possibly even unseat Dean who had been governor since 1991. Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont, called the fall campaign "a real, honest-to-goodness, social issue bonfire".Six incumbent legislators who supported civil unions lost in the September primaries, five Republicans and one Democrat. One of the Republicans who lost was two-term Senator Peter Brownell, who described being lobbied by clergy on both sides and asked: "So whose religion am I obligated statutorily to abide by?" The Roman Catholic Bishop of Burlington, Kenneth Angell, testified against the civil unions bill before a House committee and sent mailings with such headings as "How Would Jesus Vote?" and "Vote Your Informed Conscience." Both sides and candidates at all levels attracted unusual amounts of out-of-state money, including funds from the national political parties, and the amounts raised broke all records for political races in Vermont.
An election day opinion poll by Voter News Service reported that Vermonters were evenly divided, and the election results were mixed. Dean won reelection and the Democrats held their majority in the state Senate, which would block any attempt to repeal of the civil unions legislation, though their margin of control was just 16 to 14. In the primary and the general election combined, 16 incumbent supporters of civil unions were not returned to the Assembly. Republicans took control of the House for the first time in 14 years. Bishop Angell viewed it as a defeat:
In the first half of 2001, the Vermont House of Representatives passed several bills to undo the civil union legislation. One replaced civil unions with "reciprocal partnerships" that any two persons could form, which could include blood relatives. None had a chance of passing the Senate or winning Dean's signature. At the same time, the Burlington Free Press and the Rutland Herald began printing announcements of civil unions just as they did wedding notices.
The question of the legal status of same-sex relationships was attracting increasing attention in other states. On election day 2000, Nevada and Nebraska passed measures amending their constitutions to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Voters in Maine narrowly defeated a measure prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, which its supporters attributed in part to the fact that their opponents "had that little extra bit of ammunition regarding Vermont." In the spring of 2001, the legislatures of Rhode Island and Connecticut held hearings on civil unions legislation. In mid-April, seven couples filed a lawsuit to force Massachusetts to recognize same-sex marriages.
In the first year that civil unions were available, 2,479 same-sex couples formed Vermont civil unions. Only 502 of those couples were Vermont residents. About two-thirds were women. Polls showed the public remained equally divided. Dean commented: "None of the dire predictions have come true. There was a big rhubarb, a lot of fear-mongering, and now people realize there was nothing to be afraid of." Civil unions were hardly mentioned as an issue in the 2002 gubernatorial election, a three-way race won by James Douglas, a Republican who was not interested in renewing the contentious debate. The gains made by opponents of civil unions receded in the Assembly in that year as well, as the Democrats grew their majority in the Senate and Republicans gave back some of their 2000 gains in the House.
In June 2004, Thomas Clark Ely, the Episcopal Bishop of Vermont, announced rites for priests to use in the blessing of civil unions as a three-year experiment.
By October 8, 2004, 7,201 couples had entered into civil unions in Vermont. That November, even as 11 states voted for amendments to their constitutions that would ban same-sex marriage, several of which banned civil unions as well, in Vermont, Democrats took back control of the state House of Representatives and an exit poll conducted for the Associated Press reported that 40% of Vermont voters supported same-sex marriage, an additional 37% backed civil unions, and 21% supported neither. When same-sex marriage supporters in Massachusetts experienced no voter backlash that November, Marty Rouse, campaign director with the advocacy group MassEquality said: "I think Vermont helped to educate Massachusetts. Because of the geographical proximity of the two states, Massachusetts residents got to see that equal marriage rights for same-sex couples were not as frightening as some might have thought."
The ability to enter a civil union ended on September 1, 2009, after same-sex marriage legislation came into effect. Civil unions performed prior to this date remain recognized as such, and the couples may "update" their relationships into marriage upon request.
Statistics
According to the Vermont Department of Health, almost 9,000 civil unions took place in Vermont up to 2009: 1,704 in 2000, 1,875 in 2001, 1,707 in 2002, 1,397 in 2003, 712 in 2004, 452 in 2005, 429 in 2006, 352 in 2007, 268 in 2008, and 100 in 2009.Same-sex marriage
Marriage legislation
In July 2007, legislative leaders created a commission to consider "Family Recognition and Protection". Its April 2008 report made no recommendation but detailed the differences between civil unions and marriage, including the terminology and rights and obligations associated with each status.The State Senate approved same-sex marriage legislation on March 23, 2009, and Governor Jim Douglas threatened to veto it. On April 3, the State House passed an amended version of the bill 94–52, several votes shy of a veto-proof two-thirds majority. On April 6, 2009, the Senate approved the amendments made by the House, and the Governor vetoed the legislation as promised. On April 7, 2009, the Senate overrode the veto by a 23–5 vote and the House overrode it 100–49.
The law went into effect on September 1, 2009. Vermont became the fifth state to afford legal recognition to same-sex marriages, though only three other states–Connecticut, Iowa and Massachusetts–did so without limitation. California as of that date only recognized same-sex marriages established between June 16 and November 5, 2008, when it was forced to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples by voter approval of Proposition 8. Vermont was the first state to establish the legal recognition of same-sex marriage by legislation rather than as the result of a court ruling. Since September 2009, the definition of marriage in the state of Vermont has been the following:
Economic impact
A comprehensive UCLA March 2009 study concluded that extending marriage to same-sex couples would boost Vermont's economy by over $30.6 million in business activity over three years, which would in turn generate increases in state and local government sales tax and fee revenues by $3.3 million and create approximately 700 new jobs.Statistics
From September 2009 to June 2013, at least 2,779 same-sex couples had married in the state of Vermont.Public opinion
A July 2011 Public Policy Polling survey found that 58% of Vermont voters thought same-sex marriage should be legal, while 33% thought it should be illegal and 9% were not sure. A separate question on the same survey found that 79% of Vermont voters supported the legal recognition of same-sex couples, with 55% supporting same-sex marriage, 24% supporting civil unions but not marriage, 18% favoring no legal recognition, and 3% not sure.A poll conducted by the Castleton Polling Institute between June 3 and June 20, 2013 found that 66% of Vermont voters supported same-sex marriage, while 13% were against and 21% had no opinion.
A 2017 Public Religion Research Institute poll found that 80% of Vermont residents supported same-sex marriage, while 16% were opposed and 4% were unsure.