The Speedy Metamorphosis of Gay Marriage

Good morning, it’s April 26. On this day in 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed a new law allowing same-sex couples to form “civil unions” that conferred on them the same rights as heterosexuals who marry.

Vermont’s social experiment was considered radical at the time. It isn’t today. He may be considered a liberal firebrand now, but 13 years ago, Howard Dean was not only uneasy about gay marriage, he was – in his own words – “uncomfortable with gay people.”

“This was a world,” Dean told Vermont Public Television's Christopher Graff in 2011, “that was completely foreign to me.”

Gov. Dean was hardly alone among politicians of his generation, especially in rural Vermont. In 1999, the state’s Supreme Court had directed the legislature to eliminate the disparity in benefits between gay and straight couples. Reading about the high court’s ruling in the morning newspaper, Republican legislator Robert Edwards, a former state trooper who represented a conservative Catholic district, thought to himself, “Oh my God, what have we done?”

Actually, the legislature hadn’t done anything yet, but it was about to, albeit under duress. Edwards emerged as one of the key members of Vermont’s House Judiciary Committee tasked with fashioning the new statutory language.

Gov. Dean made it known that he’d simply veto any bill that had the word “marriage” in it, which was just as well with the members of the Judiciary Committee. After much discussion, they settled on “civil unions.”

But as partisans on both sides descended on the tiny capital city of Montpelier, the loud and raucous discourse over the measure was often anything but “civil.” Dean was so unnerved by the tenor of the debate that he briefly took to wearing a bullet-proof vest.

Amidst the din emerged two lawmakers known for quiet and reasoned argument. They were Republican Rep. Thomas Little, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and the ranking Democratic member, William Lippert.

Bill Lippert, as his colleagues on both sides of the aisle knew, was gay, with a partner of his own. The night the full chamber voted on the legislation produced by the Judiciary Committee, Lippert stood on the House floor and spoke from the heart.

“I have been called names in this chamber, in this building, the likes of which I have never experienced in my life,” he said quietly, fighting back tears. “And I’ve watched come true what I have always known to be true – that those who stand beside gay and lesbian people as their allies ... get targeted, too.”

When the roll was called, civil unions passed on a vote of 76 to 69. There was a price to pay for some: of the 14 Republicans who voted in favor, 13 were gone from the legislature by the next election, including Tom Little and Bob Edwards. But another trend emerged, too, one that has continued to this day among office-holders in both political parties.

During the House debate in Vermont, a Democratic lawmaker named Mary Mazzariello stood to tell her colleagues that she had two lesbian daughters, and that for her the issue was this basic: She wanted them to be treated by society no differently than her straight son.

“They did not choose to be different,” Mazzariello said that day. “Their pain and their inability to fit the mold has been our pain, too.”

Over time, many lawmakers in state capitals across the country – and in Washington, D.C. – would make that same simple appeal. Some of them were Republicans, and some of those Republicans – Vice President Dick Cheney, Sen. Rob Portman, to name two – were quite conservative.

It’s too glib to say that all this happened in only 13 years, but it is true that a great deal of ground has been covered since April 26, 2000.