R: PHX, S: FEATURES, D: 02/17/2000,

An important precedent

The vermont state legislature is currently deciding whether to grant lesbian and gay couples marriage rights or domestic-partnership rights. If recent news accounts are any indication, it looks as though the legislature will recommend domestic-partnership benefits. That would be a mistake.

It's easy to say that domestic-partnership benefits are a reasonable compromise in this situation. After all, this would still grant more rights and privileges to gay and lesbian couples than they enjoy under the laws of any other state. But it's just as easy to conclude that gay and lesbian couples should simply have the right to marry. End of story.

A domestic-partnership bill that parallels marriage rights -- but isn't called marriage -- would send the country back down the "separate but equal" road. We've tried that before, and it didn't work. Surely we don't want to try it again. The domestic-partnership solution also panders to those who say that allowing gay people to marry will weaken the institution of marriage. (This argument might sound familiar. It's what anti-miscegenationists used to say would happen if interracial couples were allowed to marry.) Of course, it is simply absurd to suggest that the union of Lois Farnham and Holly Puterbaugh -- two of the plaintiffs in the landmark suit against the state of Vermont -- would somehow weaken the institution. Last time we checked, marriage had survived the quickie Vegas coupling of Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra, not to mention their equally swift decoupling. It had survived Who Wants To Marry a Multi-Millionaire? It had survived the philandering of noted Defenders of Marriage Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich. It had even survived its most serious threat: the elevation of wives from chattel to the status of equal partners.

That said, knowing the right thing to do and actually doing it are two different matters. But it's somehow fitting that Vermont, a state with a history of taking difficult but righteous stands (it was the first in the union to ban slavery and the first to give the vote to all men, not just landowners), will set the national tone for this debate. It's only a matter of time before every state in the country has to grapple with the issue: voters in California will decide on a ballot initiative this March that would allow the state to bar recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states. Here in Massachusetts, the state legislature is wrestling with what is, by comparison to Vermont's, an embarrassingly timid domestic-partnership bill.

The people of goodwill who are seeking compromise on this issue must understand that there's no compromising basic human rights. The Vermont Supreme Court did not rule in a vacuum. Rather, it put into explicit legal language a dramatic societal shift: the human right of marriage is changing, because the culture has changed -- for the better. We've seen this happen before. It took a 1967 ruling by the Supreme Court -- the appropriately titled Loving v. Virginia -- to outlaw anti-miscegenation laws.

We're living in an important moment in the history of human rights. Anyone reading this who's too young to have lived through the civil-rights battles of the 1960s, and wonders whether he or she would have had the courage to speak out against bigotry or to stay at the front of the bus, can find out now. As Vermont debates this historic decision, we can influence the debate in our own states, cities, and homes. We can show courage by saying we support the rights of gay men and lesbians to marry. We can show courage by saying we want to get married. And we can say so in front of our conservative relatives and friends who say they think gay people are okay as long as they don't "flaunt" it. We can write to our local and national elected representatives and let them know where we stand on the issue. One by one, we can set a tone of tolerance and acceptance.