The decision by the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force to put itself out of business brings to a close a remarkable chapter in Vermont’s history that tells an important story about how to bring about social change in a democracy.
Last June the U.S. Supreme Court found that equality under the law, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, barred any state from denying same-sex couples the right to marry. It was the ultimate victory for the freedom-to-marry movement, and with that victory achieved, the work of the task force was complete. The organization will bequeath its archive to Middlebury College.
It was not easy to envision that final victory in the early days of the Freedom to Marry Task Force. Two Middlebury lawyers, Beth Robinson and Susan Murray, established the organization in 1996 in an atmosphere when open hostility to gay rights and outright homophobic bigotry were common.
It was the strategy of Robinson and Murray to put a human face on the issue of gay marriage. They spent many long days and nights on the road, meeting with community groups, organizing supporters and preparing a legal challenge. It was always their aim for activists and supporters to behave with dignity and respect, to show they deserved the dignity and respect that come with equal rights.
Their focus initially was on the lawsuit they filed on behalf of three couples who had gone to their town clerks for marriage licenses and been refused. This was the famous Baker case, named after Stan Baker, one of the plaintiffs. The six plaintiffs were chosen because they were people of enormous courage, commitment and perseverance. And they had an enormous struggle ahead of them.
The Vermont Supreme Court caused bitter disappointment for the task force when it refused to legalize gay marriage, instead giving the Legislature the job of allowing marriage or something like it. Ultimately, Robinson and Murray saw that they needed to go a step at a time — to play the long game. They won civil unions when the Legislature passed and Gov. Howard Dean signed a bill in 2000, the first time a state had granted same-sex couples rights equivalent to marriage.
The long game was long indeed. The task force had to withstand the backlash in the election and in the legislative session following the creation of civil unions and then do the painstaking work preparing for a new battle for full marriage equality. Meanwhile, Vermont’s action creating civil unions was only the first in a wave of similar battles — in Massachusetts, Iowa, California and elsewhere.
Vermont had created the template: Advocates must keep their eye on the prize, behave with dignity even as opponents become viciously hostile. People learned the lesson that the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force tried to teach: that gay people are not a threat, that they are our friends, neighbors, brothers, sisters, that love is a powerful force that, in the end, overcomes hatred and fear.
The task force in Vermont kept its eye on the prize, and in 2009 the Legislature, by a single vote, overrode the veto of Gov. James Douglas, passing a law allowing for full marriage equality. Anyone in the House chamber that day remembers it as one of the most dramatic and astonishing political occurrences of a lifetime. It was the culmination of the hard work of many hundreds of Vermonters.
The success of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force was due in part to the fact that every member, every leader, saw it was not about them. It was about something larger. In a sense it was about all of us, and whether we would live in a nation willing to free itself from the fears of the past. Robinson and Murray were the kind of leaders who never made it about themselves, and everybody in the organization caught on. They played the long game for dignity and respect. When the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed their cause last June, they had finally won.