[W]hen Hinesburg Rep. William Lippert received a call two years ago from a filmmaker producing a documentary on Vermont’s path to same-sex marriage, the state was one of a dozen leading the charge.
“One of the hopes at the time,” recalls the founder of the Samara Fund for LGBT Vermonters, “was the documentary would inspire others.”
But Lippert never envisioned he’d attend the movie’s world premiere this month, only to see the U.S. Supreme Court affirm a nationwide right to wed a week later.
“This is a tremendous day of celebration and success,” he said after Friday’s historic ruling. “I don’t think many of us could think big enough to imagine this would happen in our lifetime. But there’s still more work to do.”
When the 65-year-old Pennsylvania native came to Vermont after graduating from college in 1972, many locals had heard of the 1969 Stonewall riots for gay rights, but few knew anyone who identified with those events in New York City.
“I could hardly find any other openly gay people,” he recalls.
Lippert attended a Middlebury College program on homosexuality, for example, only to discover the school had to ask counterparts from Boston to speak because few locals dared to do so.
Two decades later, in 1992, the now-late Rep. Ronald Squires of Guilford became the first Vermont legislator to announce his homosexuality, all to help pass one of the nation’s first state laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Two years after that, Lippert joined the Legislature.
Vermont prides itself on its progressive history as the first state to adopt same-sex civil unions and the first to approve full marriage rights without a court order. But the lawmakers responsible can attest it was anything but easy.
Lippert was vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in 1999 when the Vermont Supreme Court became the first in the nation to rule in favor of marriage rights for same-sex partners — starting with the three couples who filed the 1997 case Stan Baker, et al. v. State of Vermont.
The Legislature, in turn, wrestled with how to turn the court decision into law in 2000.
“Many people forget there wasn’t same-sex marriage anywhere in the world,” Lippert says. “There’s a story of extraordinary political courage in the Vermont legislators who worked for civil unions.”
(Rutland Herald editor David Moats, who won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his editorials on the subject, elaborates on how many lost the next election in his 2004 book, “Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage.”)
It has been a difficult, challenging, and deeply satisfying lifetime.”
Lippert had worked his way up to Judiciary chairman when the Legislature considered full marriage rights in 2009. Lawmakers approved a bill, only to see Republican Gov. Jim Douglas reject it. The House — which initially approved the measure 94-52, just four votes shy of a veto-overriding two-thirds majority — went on to override the governor’s ruling 100-49.
The full history is chronicled in the new documentary “The State Of Marriage,” which premiered last week at the Provincetown International Film Festival.
“The heroes in this uplifting story are small-town Vermont lawyers Susan Murray and Beth Robinson, and Boston attorney and civil rights advocate Mary Bonauto, who forged a path forward for marriage equality while others believed the idea was a pipe dream,” the Hollywood Reporter began its recent review. “The bottom line: An indispensable addition to the filmed history of the marriage equality movement.”
The movie, expected to play in Vermont, also features Lippert and Moats (who both spoke at the premiere), politicians ranging from former Gov. Howard Dean to civil rights legend and U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, and Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally.
Lippert notes although the film ends happily, gays and lesbians still face challenges.
“Even with this ruling, there are states that don’t have nondiscrimination laws based on sexual orientation or where you can’t adopt or be a foster parent.”
Then again, Lippert has seen progress. He can point to Robinson, who’s now a Vermont Supreme Court justice. Or Enrique S. Peredo Jr., his partner of 25 years who’s now his spouse.
“I feel so privileged to have lived in this period of profound social change. If someone had said to me, ‘Someday you’ll help pass a marriage law,’ much less the whole country would recognize it with a Supreme Court decision … It has been a difficult, challenging, and deeply satisfying lifetime.”
Kevin O’Connor, a former staffer of the Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, is a Brattleboro-based writer. Email: kevinoconnorvt@gmail.com
