The XX Factor: What women really think.

• « Prev | Main | Next »

  
  

  Vermont Makes History After All!

  Posted Tuesday, April 07, 2009 11:52 AM | By E.J. Graff
  Pop the champagne! Vermont's legislature has just enacted a fully gender-neutral marriage law, overriding its governor's veto and enabling same-sex couples to enter the institution. That makes Vermont the fourth American marriage-equality state (after Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa)—and the very first to gender-neutralize its marriage laws via statute rather than court decision. It makes me want to cry ... or run up to Montpelier* and kiss every legislator who voted to treat me as an full human being.

  Vermont proves that the incremental approach does work. Vermont's leg didn't start with full equality... nor is it the only one to have voted in favor of equality. ("Firsts" are always complicated.) Some history: A decade ago, Vermont's top court ordered the legislature to recognize same-sex couples some way, somehow. (I remember interviewing those first plaintiffs for Out magazine—seems like millenniums ago.) That decision led to the nation's first "civil union" law, roughly equivalent to what Scandinavia was then calling "registered partnerships." The predicted locusts and plagues failed to descend.

  Meanwhile, all around Vermont, marriage bells started ringing. In January 2001, at Vermont's northern border, Canada started marrying same-sex pairs. To Vermont's south, Massachusetts enacted marriage on May 17, 2004 (the 50^th anniversary of the SCOTUS's Brown v. Board of Education decision). And although the Massachusetts legislature didn't gender-neutralize marriage, state lawmakers repeatedly upheld the decision by overwhelming votes. Meanwhile, after California's population voted to ban recognition of same-sex marriage in 2000 (in response to Vermont's civil unions), its LGBT community started a long-term organizing project that resulted in a registered domestic partnership law as strong as Vermont's civil unions. The Golden State's legislature twice passed marriage bills, although lawmakers couldn't override the Governator's veto.

  California's road toward marriage is too complicated to summarize—it involves several initiatives, a rogue mayor, a few court cases, and more than 35 million people. (Remember, California is more populous and demographically diverse than, say, Canada.) But my guess is that California will join the pro-marriage roster within five years. That might put it after New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, and who knows what other new state.

  But today is Vermont's day—and proof that you can win if you aim for marriage, accept second-best temporarily, show your neighbors that having two legally coupled women next door doesn't scare the cows or turn children gay, and organize and lobby like hell for full equality. Hurray to my northern neighbors! Wish I could be there for the dance party! Iowa, Sweden, Vermont: What a cool spring it is to be gay!!

  *Correction, April 7, 2009: The original post said "It makes me want to cry ... or run up to Burlington and kiss every legislator who voted to treat me as an full human being." A reader pointed out that Vermont legislators work out of the state capital, Montpelier, not Burlington.
  

  Filed under: marriage, LGBT rights, same-sex marriage, Vermont

About E.J. Graff

• E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, where she directs the Gender & Justice Project. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. As a journalist and author, her work has appeared in such venues as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy magazine, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Good Housekeeping, The Nation, The New Republic, and in more than a dozen anthologies. She collaborated on former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Evelyn Murphy's book Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What To Do About It (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, has been widely cited in legal journals, reprinted for academic use, entered as courtroom exhibits, and quoted by government policymaking bodies.

PRINT DISCUSS