Vermont Senate OKs ‘Marriage’ Rights for Gays

Hailed as a landmark advance for gay rights and vilified as a deadly assault on a sacred institution, a measure granting all the “rights and responsibilities” of marriage to same-sex couples swept to victory Wednesday in the Vermont state Senate.

The historic bill, approved by a 19-11 vote in the predominantly Democratic Senate, creates “a parallel track” to marriage known as civil union status. Supporters and opponents alike view it as the country’s most comprehensive gay rights legislation--the boldest step in an expanding movement to extend legal benefits to gay and lesbian couples, as well as, increasingly, to unmarried heterosexuals.

The bill now returns to the state House of Representatives, which passed a slightly different version last month. Gov. Howard Dean, a Democrat, has promised to sign the legislation, which could become law as early as June.

With the issue all but resolved, advocates across the country will now be watching how Vermont implements the nation’s strongest set of legal rights and benefits for homosexual couples. And the issue is expected to shift soon to other states.

In the small Senate chamber here, so white and elaborately detailed that it resembles a wedding cake, postal service worker Richard Congdon of Rutland sat amid fellow civil union opponents, wearing a white lapel ribbon to show support for conventional marriage. “Vermont will provide a stepping stone to attack the laws of marriage in this nation and a springboard for the rest of the world,” said a glum Congdon.

For much the same reason, mental health administrator Stannard Baker, a plaintiff in the state Supreme Court decision in December that prompted the legislation, was jubilant. “This is the big one, a tremendous step toward equality across our land,” Baker said. “It stops benefits from being piecemeal and makes them available to all citizens.”

Vermont Rep. Bill Lippert, a champion of the measure here, said he has been in contact with legislative counterparts in New Hampshire who are poised to begin a similar effort. Others predict that Hawaii, where the gay marriage debate has continued since 1993, will take Vermont’s action as a cue to strengthen its reciprocal benefits law.

Gay Couples Slow to Accept Benefits

Vermont’s decision to extend more than 300 benefits that come with marriage to gay and lesbian couples comes at a time when thousands of businesses and dozens of states and municipalities have moved to provide a range of benefits to unmarried couples. Experts note, however, that despite all the debate’s energy and rhetoric, gay and lesbian couples have been slow to take advantage of the benefits.

“We can reject the hypothesis that the floodgates will open and tens of thousands of homosexuals will move to Vermont,” predicted Yale University law professor William Eskridge, author of “Gay Law: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet.” “What will happen is that a modest number of couples who are really committed to one another, mainly living in Vermont, will have civil unions and then will live their normal lives.”

The Vermont bill goes beyond any previous model, offering automatic inheritance rights, the authority to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner, the right to take control of a partner’s body upon death, the right to transfer property from one partner to another without tax consequences and the right to be treated as an economic unit for tax purposes.

While same-sex couples will embark on what amounts to marriage without the name, the notion of allowing two men or two women to marry has not been embraced in any state. Indeed, 33 states and the federal government have passed defense-of-marriage laws limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

In California, at least 12 cities and four counties grant health insurance benefits to unmarried partners. Last year, Gov. Gray Davis signed a measure providing a statewide registry and offering new benefits, including hospital visitation, to same-sex couples. In November, California voters rejected gay marriage with a resounding vote in favor of Proposition 22.

“Lesbians and gay folks can take a hint,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, who applauded the Vermont decision as a potential model for California. “We get that marriage is not something a majority or even close to a majority of California voters are willing to extend. But it is still an open question whether lesbian and gay couples are entitled to basic equality, as with civil union.”

While states, counties and municipalities wrestle with the question of how to provide benefits for unmarried partners who may or may not be homosexual, some church denominations, such as the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Church and the country’s Reform rabbis, have declared support for same-sex commitment rituals. Others, such as Roman Catholics and many fundamentalist Christians, strongly oppose the possibility of gay unions.

Meanwhile, more and more private employers--an estimated 3,000 U.S. employers-- are offering, at the minimum, health care packages for same-sex partners.

In both public and private sectors, the number of employees taking advantage of such programs remains small. Of close to 8,000 state employees in Vermont, only about 50 same-sex partners have signed up for benefits under current law. In California, Kendell said, fewer than 4,000 people have registered for domestic partner benefits.

At Marriott International Inc., where employees wishing to add domestic partners to their insurance benefits must present a notarized affidavit attesting to a relationship of at least six months, about 1% of the company’s 90,000 employees have signed up for domestic-partner benefits. Of the 140,000 employees at IBM, the largest company offering such benefits, a few hundred have enrolled over the last two years.

The number who register remains small, said Eskridge, because “a lot of the attached ones don’t want to be public about their attachment. It’s a public event to trot down to sign up at the domestic partner bureau. It’s a public outing of yourself.”

Similar Recognition Available in Europe

The move to provide legal recognition for unmarried couples is not limited to the United States. Denmark, Hungary and France are among European nations that offer marriage-like status to same-sex and heterosexual partners. Eskridge said the pactes civiles (or civil pacts) in France--intended for gay couples but used increasingly by heterosexuals who want to try marriage before taking the big plunge--are not nearly as broad as the Vermont law and, for example, do not cover adoption rights.

Studies show that few gay couples have actually moved to a particular European country to take advantage of the marriage-like covenants, Eskridge said.

Using the same procedure through which heterosexual couples obtain marriage licenses, couples seeking civil union status in Vermont will register at town offices. While marriages are “sanctified” by clergy or justices of the peace, civil unions will be “certified.”

The relationships must be terminated in court, following a dissolution process patterned after traditional divorce. Custody issues also will be resolved in family court.

Home and life insurance policies in Vermont will have to be reconfigured to offer joint coverage to couples in civil unions, who also will be eligible for joint health care benefits.

Whether the civil union status will be portable to other states will have to be determined by legislatures and perhaps courts.

At the small, gold-domed state Capitol here Wednesday, there was a palpable sense of relief that the months of agonized effort around same-sex unions were coming to a close. Immediately after the vote, two senators who had been bitter opponents on the measure embraced warmly. Another opponent then approached Baker, first shaking his hand, and soon, trading a hug.

Mary Bonauto, a lawyer for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders in Boston, found the outpouring on the Senate floor a happy sign. “It’s pretty incredible that we have reached the point where non-gay people are able to walk a mile in our shoes,” Bonauto said. “That makes me hopeful.”