Same-sex marriage in Vermont

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Vermont since September 1, 2009. Vermont was the first state to introduce civil unions in July 2000, and the first state to introduce same-sex marriage by enacting a statute without being required to do so by a court decision. Same-sex marriage became legal earlier as the result of court decisions, not legislation, in four states: Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, and Iowa.

Either by legislation or court decisions, Vermont was a leader among U.S. jurisdictions in protecting the rights of gays and lesbians in the 1990s. In 1990, it was one of the first states to enact hate crimes legislation that included sexual orientation. In 1992, it added sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination statute. In 1993, the Vermont Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling established second-parent adoption rights allowing someone in a same-sex relationship to adopt his or her partner's biological children. When the legislature reformed the state's adoption statute in 1995, it made same-sex couples eligible to adopt.

On July 22, 1997, three same-sex couples sued the state and the jurisdictions that had denied them marriage licenses. They lost in the trial court on December 19. That court ruling that Vermont's statutes limiting marriage to different-sex couples were constitutional because they served the public interest by promoting "the link between procreation and child rearing".

The Vermont Supreme Court heard the case on appeal and on December 20, 1999, ruled in Baker v. Vermont that the Vermont Constitution entitles same-sex couples to "the same benefits and protections afforded by Vermont law to married opposite-sex couples". The Court did not give the plaintiffs the relief they sought. Instead of ordering state officials to allow same-sex couples to marry, it invited the state legislature to devise a solution:

Whether this ultimately takes the form of inclusion within the marriage laws themselves or a parallel "domestic partnership" system or some equivalent statutory alternative, rests with the Legislature. Whatever system is chosen, however, must conform with the constitutional imperative to afford all Vermonters the common benefit, protection, and security of the law.

The Court set no deadline, but suspended its judgement for "a reasonable period".

Mary Bonauto, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, later described how advocates for same-sex marriage struggled to understand how they had won the judgment but not the right to marry: "[T]hey had this beautiful language in there about the humanity of gay people, but I couldn't believe they had done something that I thought was a political judgment. I had never heard of segregating the word marriage from its rights and protections."

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Wikipedia