Debating romance.

From civil unions to high-profile breakups, the lessons about gay and lesbian relationships in 2000 will stay with us for years.

Few topics dominated the news this year as much as same-sex relationships. In one way or another, the status of gay couples was in the headlines throughout the year. From Vermont's civil unions law to a rash of initiatives seeking to ban recognition of gay marriages, the question of how or how not to recognize gay relationships was a key political issue. On top of that, the breakups of Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres and Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher provided the flip side to relationship bliss by showing that sometimes even the best relationships may end.

To Evan Wolfson, director of the Marriage Project at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City, the year even presented a pivotal turn in the fight to win marriage rights for same-sex couples, when both the Democratic and Republican vice presidential candidates talked compassionately during their nationally televised debate about the need to give some kind of nod to lesbian and gay unions.

"If Cheney and Lieberman can talk about marriage rights for gays and lesbians on national television, we know all of America is having that discussion, using the m word," he says. "That transforms the parameters of the debate. It is profound movement."

Of course, the catalyst for much of America's dialogue on same-sex marriage was the historic breakthrough in Vermont. Prodded by a state supreme court ruling, legislators in the Green Mountain State passed a law in April that brings gay and lesbian relationships closer to the legal equivalent of marriage than has any other action in the United States.

"We'd gotten our butts beat on marriage in several other states," says Greg Johnson, an assistant professor at Vermont Law School who was cocounsel on the same-sex partnership case in Alaska, now being appealed to its supreme court. "So when it came to a head in Vermont, it was critical timing. What makes Vermont a watershed is that we were able to turn our Dunkerque into a Normandy beach."

Vermont proved to be a bitter battleground, however, with antigay forces turning the November election into a virtual referendum on civil unions. The results were mixed. While Gov. Howard Dean won reelection and Democrats narrowly held on to the state senate, the Vermont house passed to the Republicans squarely over the issue of civil unions. Without the political numbers to repeal the law, some house Republicans have pledged to at least amend it in ways that could dilute its power.

"The election results [in Vermont] aren't going to embolden lawmakers in other states" to take on marriage, says Bill Lippert, an openly gay Vermont representative who was vice chair of the house judiciary committee, which penned the civil unions law. "But it does prove you can achieve this without a political bloodletting."

So far, Vermont civil unions are not recognized in any other state. But about three quarters of civil unions performed since the law took effect July 1 have been for out-of-staters. Lippert believes some of those couples will eventually press courts in other states to recognize their unions, thus "exporting the passion beyond the Vermont borders." Johnson thinks no other states will tackle same-sex marriage in 2001 but expects the issue to be taken up in the next three to five years in such states as New Jersey, Connecticut, or Massachusetts.

Evan Gerstmann, an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Mary-mount University in Los Angeles and author of the book The Constitutional Underclass: Gays, Lesbians, and the Failure of Class-Based Equal Protection, says activists should learn from the approach taken in Vermont.

"In Hawaii and Alaska the tactic was to take things out of the democratic process and win only through the courts," he says. "In Vermont the court was used as a way to force the legislature to deal with it. That gave the people of Vermont some say. The success clearly shows the superiority of the dual approach, which should act as a model for how to do things in other states."

Vermont can act as a model in another way as well, says Gerstmann: "The rest of the country will be able to see that Vermont is not going to hell in a handbasket. That can prove incredibly powerful in calming people's fears and paving the way for other states to follow."

While Vermont was setting the pace for the future, existing models for gay relationships were undergoing bumpy times. Folk-rock legends Cris Williamson and Tret Fure ended their 20-year relationship in March. The year also saw the breakup of actresses Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres, who had one of the few high-profile same-sex relationships and were a source of pride for many gays and lesbians. The news that Heche began dating a man after leaving DeGeneres only added to the hurt, as did the news that rock star Melissa Etheridge and her partner, Julie Cypher, were also parting company.

The political battles over gay relationships are unlikely to end soon. Most observers agree that other states are less likely to emulate Vermont than to follow California, Nevada, and Nebraska. In each of these states, voters approved limiting legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Most worrying, says David Fleischer, director of training for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C., is the constitutional amendment in Nebraska, which passed there by 70% to 30%. The amendment not only limits marriage to a man and a woman but also preemptively strikes at civil unions and domestic-partner benefits.

"To the right wing, these are all about the same thing: affording respect to gay and lesbian relationships," he says. "And they could well decide to do a whole new round of initiatives around the country, zeroing in on civil unions and domestic partnerships." In fact, they are already making such moves, he says, pointing to a recent effort to launch an initiative that would repeal domestic-partner benefits for government workers in the state of Washington.

Still, there was good news beyond the U.S. borders, as marriage rights for same-sex couples saw a boost in several countries, including Canada, where gay couples won the same legal rights as common-law couples. In the Netherlands, final approval is expected early in 2001 for a law that would, for the first time anywhere, grant gay and lesbian couples full marriage. Unfortunately, says Vermont Law School's Johnson, those victories will have little tangible legal consequence in the United States.

"But psychologically," he says, "it can have a great impact, because now we have a country that finally does it. Marriage for gay people becomes no longer a theory--there is at least one place where it is a reality." Johnson points to positive moves on legal recognition of lesbian and gay relationships in France, Germany, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Hungary, and Israel as evidence that "in a world view, it's undeniably the way Western countries are moving. Now it's up to us to follow suit."

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