Editor’s note: This commentary is by Ernest McLeod, who is a board member of the all-volunteer Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force. He lives in Middlebury.
On June 25, 2013 — the day before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision involving the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — Vermont marriages were divided into first- and second-class status.
This was not the fault of the State of Vermont, where gay couples have had the freedom to marry since 2009. The inequity persisted because married gay couples were legal strangers to one another in the eyes of the federal government, ineligible for the over 1,000 federal benefits and protections opposite-sex married couples take for granted.
As Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said during the oral arguments in the DOMA case, “There’s two kinds of marriage, there’s full marriage and then there’s sort of skim milk marriage.”
Then, overnight, that changed. On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of DOMA as unconstitutional, ruling in favor of Edie Windsor, the 84-year-old widow who was unjustly forced to pay over $360,000 in estate taxes solely because she was married to a woman. Suddenly, Edie Windsor’s 44-year relationship and legal marriage, and the loving, legal marriages of same-sex couples in Vermont and the other equality states, were no longer invisible to the federal government. Farewell, skim milk marriages. All Vermont marriages were now wholly equal. What a difference a day makes!
To show our pride in Vermont, and to thank Vermonters for all they have done toward achieving LGBT and marriage equality, Vermont Freedom to Marry will march one more time in the VT Pride Parade in Burlington on Sunday, Sept. 15.
Married same-sex couples in Vermont are now eligible for Social Security survivor benefits and spousal military benefits. They will no longer be excluded from federal employee benefits and family health care coverage, or have health plan tax burdens due to federal inequality. Married binational same-sex couples will no longer face discrimination in the immigration process, allowing them an equal opportunity to apply for green cards to keep their families together. These changes are not just about benefits: they are about family security.
In a single day, the Supreme Court decisions on DOMA and California’s Proposition 8 remarkably transformed the U.S. marriage-equality landscape. Yet these decisions did not emerge from nowhere. They were a long time coming. Through that time, Vermont has been a leading voice for the freedom to marry, reaching equality milestones that paved the way for other milestones, all essential to the progress that enabled these cases to go before the Supreme Court.
From arguing for equality in Baker v. Vermont before the Vermont Supreme Court, to the legislative passage of civil unions in 2000 in response to the court’s Baker decision, to the passage of the marriage equality bill in 2009, Vermont was at the forefront of the movement. We were the first state with civil unions; the first state to successfully pass a marriage bill via the Legislature; the only state to override a governor’s veto of marriage equality. While there were bumps on the path towards equality, especially in the aftermath of the civil union legislation, at each step along the way, fair-minded Vermonters joined together to say: Partial equality is not equality. We can do better. In doing better, for the good of all Vermont families, we set an example for the rest of the nation and for the world.
Vermonters can continue to set an example by speaking out for the freedom to marry for all Americans. Currently, 13 states (including all of New England), plus Washington D.C., have marriage equality. In 37 states, however, gay couples still lack marriage equality and the security their families need. Couples who marry in an equality state like Vermont and then move or return to a state that does not respect their marriages will be deprived of both state and federal benefits, since some federal marriage benefits are currently dependent on the validity of the marriage in the couple’s state of domicile.
Equality shouldn’t depend on where you live, but as long as the uneven and unfair patchwork of marriage laws remains, it does. Fortunately, the equality momentum keeps building, with an ever-growing majority in support of the freedom to marry.
To show our pride in Vermont, and to thank Vermonters for all they have done toward achieving LGBT and marriage equality, Vermont Freedom to Marry will march one more time in the VT Pride Parade in Burlington on Sunday, Sept. 15. We hope you will join us to celebrate the culmination of almost 20 years of marriage-equality advocacy and to rally for carrying Vermont’s civil rights leadership forward.
