Editorial from The Guide	Editorials Archive

Vermont made history last year by enacting legislation allowing for civil unions between homosexual couples. All the rights the Green Mountain state made available to heterosexuals through marriage were to become accessible to homosexuals entering a state-sanctioned civil union.

Last month, Vermont legislators revisited the civil unions issue, and gay marriage activists warned of "an anti-gay initiative designed to demean gay and lesbian relationships." Gay people across the country were urged to contact Vermont officials to demand defeat of this "anti-gay" legislation. Indeed, state legislators noted how opposition from "gay families" was "profound."

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Just what were we being urged to oppose? What homophobic plot was the Vermont legislature concocting?

It turns out gay marriage activists were demanding that Vermont not extend the concept of civil unions to other couples ineligible to marry (such as two elderly sisters, or a grandfather and grandson) who shared a household and domestic responsibilities.

"I don't think any of us like our relationships being equated with a mother-daughter relationship," the head of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders told reporters. The vote to extend benefits was, according to the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force, a "disappointment."

Of course, these are the same groups who lobby for gay marriage under the rallying cry "equality." They claim it unfair to reward heterosexual couples with benefits unavailable to homosexual couples. And these are the same people who react vociferously when conservatives assert that sanctioning homosexual marriage would demean traditional marriage.

But gay marriage advocates' opposition to broader domestic benefits in Vermont reveals that their professed dedication to equality and inclusivity is hypocritical political camouflage. They are not seeking fairness for all; they crave the respectability they imagine flows from a state-sanctioned, privileged, and exclusive relationship. They want to become junior straight people, a little "more equal" than those who do not arrange their household along the traditional coupled model.

Claiming that gay relationships are demeaned by recognition of other domestic arrangements exactly echoes right-wingers' denunciation of gay couples seeking marriage benefits. Gay people who do not see the irony of challenging traditional marriage while at the same time asserting the sanctity of homo-coupledom underscore how twisted values can become when the desire for approval overshadows considerations of fairness.

Let us use the wisdom we have gained as outsiders to demand that state benefits follow logically from legitimate social goals. If two (or three... or more) people want to set up house and depend on each other for services and benefits that the state would have to provide absent such an arrangement, the state has a legitimate interest in promoting the stability of that relationship. Such domestic partnerships can and should have wide, flexible legal parameters that do not dictate the gender, sexual or biological relationship, age, race, or number of partners. Undoubtedly, most people will find coupledom the easiest relationship to establish and maintain, but others need not be discriminated against.

As gay people, we should seek to abolish the unfair privileges granted to those who marry, not agitate to join the respectable elite. The Vermont legislature's effort to have our relationships taken on par with those of a mother and daughter is, of course, no insult... once we understand that the issue should not be about sanctioning respectability, but rather encouraging loving responsibility.