My attention was caught recently by an reprint article in the local paper. I called up the original New York Times posting (9/3/00)and read the full report. As I read it, I saw a picture of Vermont (a small state in northeastern United States) which I had been shutting out of my consciousness. Back in April I had asked a woman from where I used to work what was happening during the hearings on the bill to legalize civil unions. She said her teen-aged daughter had attended one as a supporter and was harassed, told she was going to hell, sprinkled with "holy water," and came home scared.
Background: The legislation authorizing civil unions, passed by the Vermont Legislature and signed by the Governor, was created because the Vermont Supreme Court issued a decision stating that same-sex couples must receive the same benefits and protections that Vermont provides to heterosexual married couples, because the "common benefits" clause of the Vermont Constitution forbids the government from favoring one group of people over another. The law defines a civil union as a legal relationship between two people of the same sex who aren't related to each other. Some of the benefits are the right to inherit from a spouse who dies; to be covered by a spouse's health insurance; to hospital visitation when a spouse is ill; and to workers' compensation benefits. Civil unions can only be terminated in family court. Interestingly, the law also adds definitions of "marriage" as the legally established union of one man and one woman to several existing statutes.
I read some of the stories posted in the Burlington Free Press (the state's largest newspaper) during the hearings, and stories that are coming out of this fall's political campaigns. The issue of civil unions has illuminated some nasty fault-lines in what has long been blazoned as a bucolic place to live. And those fault-lines follow Vermonters when they drive through other states.
Friends (a heterosexual couple, by the way) from Vermont driving out to Colorado experienced several occurrences of people harassing them because of their Vermont license plates. They also told of a fellow who attended a sports game in a neighboring state and found his car vandalized because of its Vermont plates.
Homosexual couples within Vermont are experiencing feelings of fear from actions happening in their hometowns, places that used to create a "live and let live" ambiance.
A farmer started a groundswell when he posted a sign in his yard, saying "Take Back Vermont." He's sold more than 4,000 of them, although people who post them say that there is no hatred behind the slogan. The signs themselves have been subject to vandalism, even when on the poster's front lawn.
(I wonder just what is the vision of a 'taken-back Vermont.' How far back is it taken? To the 1960s when rifle bullets hit a home in Irasburg to frighten the recently-arrived black preacher? Or to the 1860s when houses, such as one in my former hometown, were stations on the underground railroad which moved escaping slaves north to Canada.)
I shudder to think that the general respectfulness that I believed Vermonters had for each other's opinions has been trashed. When one person's opinion expressed on their own property, via a sign, is defaced, the defacers have lowered the bar for all opinions. Civility has sunk into the mud, perhaps even as deep as some of the huge mud-holes in April, and the long-simmering fracture between born-Vermonters and moved-in Vermonters has seemingly cracked wide open.
I favor civil unions of loving partners and have seen same-sex partnerships that have lasted far longer than many "religious" opposite-sex marriages. Perhaps what really should be addressed is why "marriage" has evolved so many benefits. Why should blood or married relatives (who could be disliked) be admitted to the hospital room and deeply caring friends shut out? Why should dependent health insurance benefits be limited to the "married" partner and offspring?
(In fact, the civil union bill includes something called "reciprocal benefits" which is described as "two blood relatives will be able to enter into a reciprocal beneficiary contract and gain seven benefits primarily related to health care, with contracts filed with the Commissioner of Health." Frankly, I don't know what exactly that means, but it hints that a daughter or son could help out a parent or another sibling with health care.)
I feel that many folks in Vermont are afraid of losing identity in some fashion. Likely they are fearful that their children will become homosexuals (and you know what? some will; they always have); they fear that "outsiders" are passing laws that they oppose and, consequently, telling them what to do (and if one is a several-generation Vermonter, there can be major resentment.)
But I also know folks whose roots are equally as deep who are not fearful of such changes as evinced by civil unions, but instead, clearly see the fairness of them. So, generalizations are impossible to make.
I couldn't help but contrast this scene with what Wayne Dyer says about unconditional love in a tape series that I've been listening to during the last two weeks ("Manifest Your Destiny," which Randy Peyser interviews him about in another article in this issue). This love just simply loves without expectation, without strings, and most importantly, I think, without fear.
And I think it comes down to this: when you live with love always uppermost, fear dies away. If you no longer fear all those "others" who live different lives from yours, then you begin to see them as part of "you" also. And when you recognize that that person over there is part of you, you begin to understand and experience a love that has no conditions attached. And with that love, all differences become as naught.
Cherie
Table of Contents
Letter to the Author: