Let's celebrate
Toolbox
Published: August 30, 2009
On Tuesday this week gay and lesbian couples in Vermont will be married. On one level, a marriage is an ordinary thing. They happen every day. Clergy men and women perform weddings as a matter of routine, trying all the while to recognize that, at a different level, each is unique and momentous.
It is momentous because in any life a marriage is a milestone, an extraordinary event when two people pledge themselves to each other in a way that no other institution allows. The pledge can have many meanings, depending on those involved — from the elderly couple promising to live out their final days together to the young couple for whom marriage is the foundation upon which they hope to raise a family. Whatever the unique circumstances, marriage gives the commitment a fullness and a seriousness reflected by the place it occupies in our religions as a holy rite.
If the state's experience with civil unions is any guide, the weddings joining gay and lesbian couples on Tuesday will have an added emotional charge — the fulfillment of a dream long deferred occurring within the welcoming embrace of a society finally willing to recognize that gay relationships are as important as any other.
The weddings on Sept. 1 will vary. Some will be quiet and private. Others will be grand celebrations leavened, as with the advent of civil unions, by the joy that the celebration is allowed at all.
The topic of gay marriage and gay rights has riven Vermont over the past 20 years like no other. And yet at each step of the way the advance of gay rights has succeeded in driving back the territory of fear. Dire warnings of immorality and decay have accompanied each new legislative proposal, but the reality has proven benign or even salutary. To recognize and honor gay families, it turns out, is good for families and good for society. Religious views differ, and there will always be those who disapprove of homosexuality on moral grounds. But whatever our religious point of view, our common humanity makes a claim on us that is hard to deny.
The marriages of gay and lesbian couples seem extraordinary because they have not happened before, but as with civil unions, the event is likely to weave itself rapidly into the fabric of ordinary life. It is important at this moment, therefore, to remember the extraordinary courage of those who stepped forward to fight this battle. And it was a battle. The atmosphere of vitriol and hate within which the debate occurred was searing. And yet advocates of same-sex marriage advanced their cause with unwavering conviction and dignity. That goes for the hundreds of nameless volunteers who labored on behalf of the cause; the advocates who charted the course of the battle; gay and lesbian Vermonters who put themselves at risk in speaking out; and legislators who risked their careers to do what they thought was right.
It also goes for the thousands of Vermonters who had never given a thought before to the issues of gay marriage or gay rights. The marriages occurring on Tuesday of gay and lesbian couples would not be possible if ordinary Vermonters from Pownal to Canaan, from Vernon to Alburg, had not been willing to look anew at a human reality that forever had been shrouded from view. Vermonters finally were willing to open their minds and their hearts, determining in the end that they would no longer be imprisoned by the prejudices of the past.
Much is made of the historic strain of tolerance and respect that has imbued life in Vermont for generations with a unique brand of egalitarian politics. We Vermonters sometimes overdo the self-celebration on that score.
But on Sept. 1, as gay and lesbian Vermonters celebrate their marriages, Vermonters everywhere can celebrate the day. In legalizing gay marriage the Legislature acted, not under the compulsion of a judicial ruling, but at the bidding of Vermonters whose constitutional, political and moral claim could no longer be denied. Opponents claimed that they had the support of grass-roots Vermonters, but the battle for gay marriage was won at the grass roots, among Vermonters who saw that it was time to widen the sphere of equality. If the marriages occurring on Tuesday are celebrations of love for those involved, for the rest of us they are a celebration of democracy itself.
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