For better or for worse.

Vermont steps away from marriage and moves closer to domestic partnership

It's rare that one issue can unite gay activists and their radical right-wing opponents. It would seem even more unlikely when the matter centers on the controversial question of granting gay and lesbian couples the right to marry. But in the wake of last December's Vermont supreme court decision mandating equal rights for gay couples, both gays and lesbians and their religious-right adversaries agree on one thing: Lawmakers' willingness to embrace domestic-partner benefits as a compromise is just plain wrong.

"I feel a real disappointment," says Rose-Marie Pelletier, a regional coordinator for the Vermont Freedom to Marry Action Committee, a lobbying group that has pressed for gay and lesbian marriage. "I feel I'm being told my relationship is not equal to a heterosexual one."

An appalled Randall Terry, the right-wing Christian radio talk show host most famous for founding the antiabortion group Operation Rescue, is equally indignant. "This is an assault on the institution of marriage," he proclaimed to the Los Angeles Times from his recently established base just yards from Vermont's gold-domed capitol building in Montpelier.

Both Pelletier and Terry were reacting to a February 9 vote by Vermont's house judiciary committee to draft a bill that would grant gay and lesbian couples the same rights and privileges as married heterosexual couples, without the official seal of marriage. The committee voted 8-3 in favor of a comprehensive domestic-partnership plan rather than full-fledged marriage. House leaders decided on February 23 to postpone further action on the bill until mid March.

In fact, domestic partnership pleases few people on either side of the issue. During the weeks of hearings before the judiciary committee, practically everyone who attended wore either a pink sticker in favor of gay marriage or a white sticker emblazoned with slogans such as GOD'S PLAN: ONE WOMAN, ONE MAN. There were no banners or stickers or slogans promoting domestic partnership.

Subsequently, the committee released a 22-page proposal that would serve as the foundation of the to-be-drafted bill. The proposal calls for designing a parallel--but decidedly separate--state system for granting those benefits. The carefully worded document pointedly avoids the term marriage. The committee developed it in response to the landmark December 20 decision in which the state supreme court ruled that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same benefits as heterosexual couples under the state's constitution.

After five weeks of public hearings, the judiciary committee's proposal was the first step in the legislature's attempt to find a way to satisfy the court's edict. Both gay and lesbian advocates and the religious right agree the move is a calculated compromise.

"They are tossing up domestic partnership and hoping we're placated," Pelletier says.

For his part, Terry told the Times most voters would "vomit out" the notion of gay and lesbian marriage. The judiciary committee is offering Vermonters a domestic-partnership alternative, he said, hoping it "numbs them."

Judiciary committee members who voted in favor of the domestic-partnership option said they were acknowledging political realities.

"What is achievable in this general assembly and this body politic this year is a broad civil rights bill and, speaking for myself, that does not cross the threshold of marriage," Republican representative Thomas Little, chairman of the judiciary committee, told Vermont's Rutland Herald newspaper.

But committee member Steve Hingtgen, of the Progressive Party, says facts and reason should have led the committee to a different conclusion. "It was the committee's responsibility to put down a stake based on the weeks of testimony we heard," he says. "There was not one persuasive argument, outside of a religious one, against marriage. The logical conclusion, then, is to extend full marriage rights, regardless of political difficulties. I'm ashamed we didn't do that."

Although only 50 of the state's 150 house members have come out in support of a same-sex marriage bill, Hingtgen says Vermont legislators are less worried about a fight in the state-house than one at the voting booths in November. With every state senator and state representative up for reelection, Hingtgen says his colleagues are closely watching polls. "There is a strong right wing here that is very loud, has a lot of money, and will absolutely run on this issue," he says. "The Democrats don't want to be tagged as the ones who voted for gay marriage."

Despite the apparently decisive turn of events, some gay and lesbian activists refuse to concede defeat for a bill that would grant marriage to same-sex couples. "As [the committee] works to draft a bill, they will find out just how difficult it is to guarantee all the benefits of marriage" through a parallel system, says Evan Wolfson, director of the Marriage Project at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national gay and lesbian civil rights group based in New York City. "How can you treat people equally while trying to shove them into a separate line at the clerk's office?"

And Mary Bonauto of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, co-counsel in the case that precipitated the Vermont supreme court ruling, reminds legislators, "We can always go back to court if the legislation fails to fulfill its job."

But "there just aren't any chances" that a marriage bill will succeed before the session ends in April, says Rep. Bill Lippert. "The possibility is zero."

Lippert, an openly gay Democrat who serves as vice chairman of the judiciary committee, was one of the three members who voted for marriage rather than domestic partnership. "It's time to turn our attention to what is possible rather than holding on to hope for something that is not going to happen," he says.

The key battles now, Lippert says, are to make sure the domestic-partnership bill is as comprehensive as possible and is not weakened by amendments that seek to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman. And even winning those fights is not guaranteed, he says: "We're not in the clear on this yet."

Dahir is a freelance writer based in New york City.