A look at a groundbreaking law eighteen years later, after the jump …
But first: Top Comments appears nightly, as a round-up of the best comments on Daily Kos. Surely ... you come across comments daily that are perceptive, apropos and .. well, perhaps even humorous. But they are more meaningful if they're well-known ... which is where you come in (especially in diaries/stories receiving little attention).------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send your nominations to TopComments at gmail dot com by 9:30 PM Eastern Time nightly, or by our KosMail message board. Please indicate (a) why you liked the comment, and (b) your Dkos user name (to properly credit you) as well as a link to the comment itself.
Eighteen years ago today, Gov. Howard Dean signed the world’s first civil unions law into existence. Now, they seem quaint today … yet living just across the Connecticut River from Vermont (in New Hampshire) I can tell you that even that was a flashpoint in civil society, threatening to tear apart friendships. In this essay, I would like to focus on a few individuals who made that institution come-to-pass …. with several of them being Republicans, interestingly.
On December 20, 1999 the Vermont Supreme Court decided the case of Baker vs. Vermont— with a 5-0 (concurring ruling) that the institution of marriage could not be limited only to heterosexual couples. The plaintiff’s lead attorney in the case was Beth Robinson — who today sits on the Supreme Court of Vermont herself.
Lead counsel Beth RobinsonOne of the five justices (Denise Johnson) held that the Vermont constitution's Common Benefits Clause (Chapter I, Article 7) — guaranteeing all citizens equal benefit and protection of the law — meant that the state must issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples .. and that it was up to the Court to issue that ruling.
The other four justices were unwilling to go that far — deciding that this was a decision based upon “common benefits”, not rights — … and decided to have the state legislature craft a remedy to this situation. And the majority ruling was issued by Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy who — like Sandra Day O’Connor on the US Supreme Court — did not have a strictly judicial career before joining the Court.
Jeffrey Amestoy (besides his law degree) had a masters in public administration from the JFK School at Harvard, and had served in various GOP administrations as counsel for several governmental committees (and also as an assistant state Attorney General). He was elected as Attorney General for seven two-year terms (from 1984-1996) before Gov. Howard Dean appointed him as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1997.
And it was this background that led him to see the enormity of the decision he and his colleagues were being called upon to make. He recalled that the Supreme Court of the state of Hawaii had issued rulings in 1996 that might later pave-the-way to recognition of same-sex couples … which spawned a backlash that led to a 1998 voter referendum outlawing any same-sex unions.
And that is why he and others crafted a legislative response that allowed for a parallel institution to marriage to be created .. and to task the Legislature with it.
Jeffrey Amestoy (born 1946)While that might seem like rather weak tea today — especially given the image of Vermont as a super-blue state today — it was quite radical in 2000.
Other than the Johnson landslide of 1964, it was not until Bill Clinton in 1992 that the state of Vermont ever gave its electoral votes to a Democrat (which it has done ever since). And while it has a New England “live and let live” attitude, same-sex marriage was thought of as a bridge-too-far for many. Finally, in a small state whose largest city (Burlington) is only 42,000 today — and with the majority of its citizens living in towns of less than 3,000 population — most residents did not know any openly gay neighbors at the dawn of this century.
Thus, the bitterness that resulted was palpable — with many saying on TV, radio and print that nothing since the Vietnam War had been this rancorous. And so proponents needed someone with skill to be able to craft a remedy when the state legislature convened in the capital city of Montpelier in January, 2000.
And they found him, in the House judiciary committee chairman Tom Little— a Republican from the Burlington suburb of Shelburne, a chancellor of the Episcopalian Church and a practicing attorney with a law degree from Cornell. Nearly all involved point to him as the key to getting a remedy passed — with the nation’s first openly gay Op-Ed columnist for a major newspaper (Deb Price) — who obtained a civil union that summer — noting him in several of her columns.
Former VT Rep. Tom LittleThe conversations began with the backdrop of Gov. Howard Dean who — in hindsight — must have been contemplating a Presidential run at this time. He let it be known that he would veto any bill containing the word “marriage” and told Vermont public television host Chris Graff in 2011 that the world of gay people was “completely foreign to me” at that time.
Tom Little and his committee also made two other decisions about the legislation that would be crafted. One was about the name: with vice-chairman Bill Lippert (a Democrat who was the only openly gay member of the Legislature at that time) wanting something dignified. “Domestic partnerships” were thought too clunky and “civil accord” sounded like a car model. Finally (in the month of February) was the term “civil union” adopted.
The other decision was to craft this plan to apply only to same-sex couples, and not try to palm-it-off as being for heterosexual couples too (such as two elderly sisters) which some on the right sought. Tom Little explained to an interviewer:
It would have afforded straight couples two options — marriage or civil union — while gays and lesbians would be limited to one.
In addition, Vermont heterosexual couples had not gone to court to complain of discriminatory treatment, he points out.
Someone outside the legislature whose voice became influential was the editorial page editor of the Rutland Herald, David Moats— Rutland being the state’s second largest city (albeit with less than 20k population) located adjacent to the Killington ski resort area. Most newspapers across the state were timid about weighing in editorially on the issue — and the largest paper (the Burlington Free Press) refused to take any stand (with some speculating its editor was a born-again Christian, and thus unlikely to take a stand that might upset the largest city’s more liberal readers).
By contrast, the Rutland region was/is more socially conservative for Vermont .. yet David Moats took a stand in favor of equal protection .. while threading the needle in favor of even-handedness and respecting the opinions of all. For this, David Moats won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing, wrote a 2004 book on the subject and gave Terry Gross of Fresh Air an interview on the book. One example of his writing comes from March, 2000:
Are our politicians supposed to surrender their judgment so as to mirror the town meeting ballots? On that question the famous quote from Edmund Burke is in order: "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion."
David Moats/Rutland HeraldOf course, there were opponents — with the leader coming from a town in the conservative “Northeast Kingdom” part of the state (near the Canadian border) named Nancy Sheltra— who brought out Operation Rescue’s Randall Terry(!) and denounced the pending legislation as “legalizing sodomy”.
GOP foe — Nancy SheltraShe and others already planned to challenge anyone supporting change in primaries later that year, and when it came to Tom Little:
Rod Fisher, Little’s challenger in that race, says he was motivated to run because of the incumbent’s high-visibility stance on civil unions. And Fisher, a 62-year-old retiree, apparently intends to make sexual preference an issue in the race. Although Little and his wife of 23 years have produced three children, Fisher insists his opponent “must be either homosexual or bisexual,” adding, “everybody who voted for the bill is either homosexual or bisexual.”
Very …. umm …. contemplative stuff, huh?
During the Statehouse debate itself, the rancor was so great that state police devised an “escape route” for legislators, telling them that if they were ordered to leave, they must do so … without an ‘if’ ... or an ‘and’ ... or a ‘but’. (And all of this for civil unions, not for full marriage equality … in Vermont).
One additional name of note was GOP representative John Robert Edwards, a retired VT state trooper. The morning after he heard the original court decision — and that he would be among those called upon to implement it — he thought, “Oh my God, what have we done?” Yet he was moved when shown accounts of the civil rights debates in the 1960’s in the Green Mountain State, noting that there were only minor word changes as near as he could tell from the task-at-hand.
Democratic Rep. Mary Mazzariello told those assembled of her two lesbian daughters: “They did not choose to be different — their pain and inability to fit the mold has been our pain, too”. When it was Bill Lippert’s turn, he not only made the case for civil unions, he also noted the pressure others were to face:
“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.”
Bill Lippert (D) and John Edwards (R) todayThe vote in the Senate was 19-11 in favor (which took place after the vote in the House, noted below) was a far more expected outcome.
I cannot find it online, but recall a newspaper story from years ago. One (unnamed) female senator noted that the vote was 10-0 among female members (Democrats and Republicans) because they looked at the issue as one of relationships. By contrast, male senators voted 9-11 in the aggregate against because (as best I can recall her explanation), “Men thought of the sex .. and gagged”.
Yet it was the House vote that was in doubt. On March 15, 2000, the vote was 75-69 in favor — and following action in the Senate, Gov. Dean signed Act 91 into law eighteen years ago today (which went into effect on July 1st, 2000).
As noted, there was some intense backlash. A movement called Take Back Vermont was spawned (although many visitors to the state misinterpreted their bumper stickers as meaning “Bring home Vermont maple syrup”). In Howard Dean’s re-election that year (against a GOP opponent dedicated to repealing the law) he won only 50.4% of the vote — had he fallen below 50%, the Vermont constitution calls for the Legislature to elect the governor, a dicey proposition.
And this …. in bucolic VermontMeanwhile, there were more than ten legislators who voted for civil unions then lost their seats (including John Robert Edwards noted above). The GOP re-captured the House, which voted to repeal civil unions in 2001 … but which was voted down in the Senate (and would have been vetoed by Gov. Dean, anyway). Lastly (in shades of Kim Davis a decade later) the state’s Attorney General had to issue guidelines to town clerks about following their duty to uphold the law.
Aftermath of Civil Unions — in northern New England
As is well-known, marriage equality went on to success even before the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing it nationwide.
In Vermont, Act 91 required that a commission conduct a review of its impact upon the state … and the commission disbanded in 2002, following its report that the law had minimal effects. The legislature in Vermont voted to institute full marriage equality in 2009, overriding a veto by its then-GOP governor.
Here in New Hampshire, the state legislature enacted civil unions in 2007 — the first to enact a same-sex union law without a court order (or the threat of a lawsuit) …. simply because the 2006 elections had given the Democrats control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature for the first time in decades. In 2009 the legislature voted to approve same-sex marriage (just after the neighboring states of Vermont and Maine did).
The nationwide 2010 electoral disaster gave the GOP a large legislative majority in New Hampshire, with many expecting the GOP to repeal the new law (the only question being whether they had the votes to override Democratic governor John Lynch’s promised veto). Yet in 2012, the House voted against repeal by 211-116 — a stunning result, with many Republicans saying they opposed the law, yet could not “take away” marriages already entered into .. even though the repeal would have grandfathered them in.
There are some happy endings to the civil unions battle .. for others, not so much.
In 2004, gay rights opponent Nancy Sheltra lost her re-election bid (by fourteen votes) and the Legislature turned solidly Democratic, where it has remained largely ever since.
The former Republican chief justice Jeffrey Amestoy retired in 2004 and was a Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School from 2005-2014. He has since written a 2015 book about Richard Henry Dana (an abolitionist lawyer) and in 2017 wrote a statewide Op-Ed entitled Trump, Know Nothings and Judges.
The former Republican state rep John Robert Edwards was turfed-out of the Legislature (as was noted) for his “yes” vote — yet received an appointment as a U.S. Marshal from the George W. Bush administration.
Sadly, two months ago the Rutland Herald (in a cost-cutting move) eliminated the position of editorial page editor, laying-off David Moats (though he still has an occasional commentary for Vermont Public Radio).
Bill Lippert remains in the Vermont legislature to this day (now one of six openly gay members) and is now chairman of the House health care committee. He was ambushed by Bill-O’s old stalker in the statehouse cafeteria in 2007, but later received applause when next he entered the chamber.
The aftermath has been the most kind to former legislator Tom Little. He won his 2000 re-election bid (defeating the toxic opponent mentioned above in a primary) and was re-elected once more in 2002 before leaving in 2004. He remains of counsel in his law firm because …. he has become the go-to guy in Vermont if you need a respected figure for a board of directors (or a blue-ribbon panel).
He has been the general counsel at VSAC (a state-run organization providing post-secondary finance and training), was named in 2014 as a Vermont representative to the US Commission on Civil Rights, in 2015 was named as an independent counsel to investigate a campaign finance complaint against the state attorney general, in 2017 was named by GOP governor Phil Scott to be co-chair of a state commission on possible legalization of marijuana in the Green Mountain state and just this past February was named a a trustee of the University of Vermont’s medical school.
I have heard civil unions now described as “a mediocre idea whose time had arrived … and has now passed”. Yet from my vantage point across the Connecticut River in 2000, it was what was needed at the time in Vermont.
Let’s close with a solo effort from The Who’s guitarist Pete Townshend he adapted from the 1600’s… which sums-up the progress made in this important area.
x xYouTube VideoNow, on to Top Comments:
From elfling:
In her own diary on today’s Fox & Friends fiasco, seashells quotes another person’s description of the whole administration.
And in the front-page endorsement by Markos in the California primary for the US Senate— Cali Scribe proposes a new word (and it’s a good one).
From Youffraita:
In the diary by sassyfrancis about real estate tycoon Sean Hannity— a diary-worthy comment all by itself came from 4CasandClio … as is the comment that immediately follows it, by sagesource.From BlackSheep1:
In the front-page story about the appointment of a special master in the Michael Cohen case — I have a thread to nominate for Top Comments, and it's this exchange of goodness between goodasgold, QDMacaw, essmeier, and OrigamiOracle.And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the front-page story about Michael Avenetti’s off-hand suggestion that the pay-off of a woman’s abortion was not the result of a tryst from Elliott Broidy, but possibly David Dennison — txdoubledd analyzed Avenetti’s appearance on Morning Joe and makes some detailed observations.And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
1) BOOM. by Ubiquitous A +213 2) I felt it was an impressive speech of a young ma … by txdoubledd +184 3) Is Trump smart enough to pick up on the fact tha … by 4CasandChlo +133 4) From TPM, a R-KY says Macron speech is the "dark … by txdoubledd +131 5) Its not like this speech shamed ONLY Trump. The … by PissedGrunty +125 6) I think that’s incredibly unfair on your part. M … by dsnottselliott +124 7) The bankers and corporations who benefitted the … by Dfh1 +122 8) [image] by Rikon Snow +112 9) From the Borowitz Report: … by Sher Watts Spooner +110 10) I can only hope I live long enough for a woman r … by The Katwoman +102 11) Best of luck on your run! Wish you were running … by Gertie Green +97 12) Tester made it clear those who have spoken up ca … by dsnottselliott +96 13) Hillary Clinton has a law degree, and lots of go … by RedDan +95 14) I read (and don't trust my memory-I have CRS) th … by The grouch +90 15) For most folks, whatever paycheck increase they … by CygnusX1 +86 16) Always a delight to enjoy some superb trolling … by dmhlt 66 +85 16) My brother -a Trump supporter- got laid off in F … by Truther +85 18) Thanks Greg! … by Denise Oliver Velez +82 19) Seems like this should have been in your post so … by RandomNonviolence +81 20) Also, Charles Gaba keeps pointing out that a fai … by blue aardvark +77 21) “Need” is probably a mistaken perception. I susp … by jqjacobs +73 21) They don’t even try to hide it. by DRo +73 23) It’s a good idea to include a link to your websi … by nadeje +71 24) Hilarious, an American journalist Chris Dickey ( … by txdoubledd +70 25) The bankers and corporations who benefitted the … by Holcolmb +69 26) Fabulous, as always! by samanthab +68 26) I feel physically ill. This is our government? H … by oldsalty +68 26) That shit pile on the right is definitely a cons … by pelagicray +68 26) The best option is that the judge finds that a S … by kutting +68 30) I knew a faster typer would get this out first! … by gchaucer2 +66 30) Technically the crook is correct about the name … by gchaucer2 +66 30) Perhaps you’ve heard that ZERO Republicans on th … by ericlewis0 +66 30) We know she fully supporter the birther movement … by billyzero +66