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Many feel Vermont's Supreme Court handed gay people a Christmas present December 20, with a ruling that opens the door to marriage for same-sex couples. But campaigners for gay marriage seem to have missed another gift hidden in the box-- the decision appears to lower the age-of-consent for homosexual sex in Vermont by two years, allowing-- under certain circumstances-- same-sex couples where one partner is at least 14 years old to marry and enjoy sex without facing arrest. Currently, Vermont authorities can prosecute anyone who has sex with someone under 16 to whom he or she is not legally married, with the penalty up to 10 years in prison.

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Expansion of the right of gay youth to have consensual gay sex-- at the price of wedding bells-- appears one of the effects of the Vermont court's landmark decision, which instructs the state legislature either to allow same-sex couples to marry or to enact into law a parallel-track "domestic partnership" arrangement according the same benefits.

The Vermont court said that it violated the state constitution's "Common Benefits Clause" to withhold from same-sex couples the advantages and privileges of marriage. To do so, the court ruled, would constitute an "artificial government preferment" for opposite-sex couples, which the court said that the Common Benefits Clause prohibits.

This argument differs from that embraced by Hawaii's state Supreme Court, which contended in 1994 that the ban on same-sex marriage constituted sex discrimination. In response to that ruling, the first by any US state high court, Hawaii voters amended their constitution last year to preserve the ban on same-sex marriage, after a campaign funded largely by outside right-wing groups. Revising the state constitution is procedurally much harder in Vermont. That, together with popular distrust of outside pressure in a state that was once an independent republic, means that the Vermont court's ruling is likely to stick.

How to remedy what they agreed was the current unfairness proved the main source of contention for the Vermont justices. In the one dissent, Justice Denise Johnson argued that the court should immediately allow same-sex couples to marry, rather than instructing the state legislature to choose between same-sex marriage outright or fashion something that so looks and quacks.

One of the benefits of matrimony in the Green Mountain State, which by the court's logic has to be granted same-sex couples, is the right of married partners to have consensual sex together without state intrusion. People can marry in Vermont under some circumstances at 14-- two years before the state says they can legally consent to sex if unwed. Under Vermont law, persons older than 14 but under 16 need the approval of one of their parents or their guardian. In addition, a judge must declare that the union is "in the public good."

These provisions may be high hurdles for a 14-year-old to jump over in order to have legal gay sex. They hardly leave to what are sexually mature persons the freedom to choose their own social and amorous arrangements. But the same criticism holds for the Vermont court's decision as a whole, which lets same-sex couples in on the privileges and obligations of marriage, but only makes more marginal the position of those left outside-- persons multiply attached, serially involved, or single. Why these groups are no less deserving than couples of legal protection is something the Vermont court-- and advocates of same-sex marriage-- don't address.

Why should access to health care, a pension in old age, certain tax write-offs, or a recognized right to parent a child ever depend on how someone is partnered? Shouldn't a person be able to designate any one or number of agreeable friends as their "next of kin," and sever kinship to those to whom they may be related by blood, but nothing else? Unbundling marriage's privileges and obligations would allow people to choose freely their relationships together and their degrees of mutual responsibility and commitment. Amidst the celebration and resentment the Vermont ruling has engendered, those questions have won scant attention, little more than the smidgen of sexual freedom the decision grants gay youths.