The Vermont Legislature has voted to grant marriage equality to all of it’s citizen’s making it the fourth (or fifth pending the California Supreme Court’s ruling on Prop 8 ) state to do so, and the first to do so through the legislature alone.
The legislation blew past 2/3s margin to override the governor’s veto in the state Senate (with a vote of 23-5), but just squeaked by in the House (with a vote of 100-49). Still, the anti-marriage bigots have argued that they only oppose same-sex marriage because it’s not the “will of the people” and the courts shouldn’t decide it. Well now marriage equality has been established undeniably through the legislative process (and in fact by veto-overriding margin). I wonder if those goalposts will now change; let me guess, not the measuring stick will be popular vote referendum alone? Sorta like when former-President Bush said the issue should be left to the states until the states started deciding the opposite way he would have, THEN he decided to push for a federal law (“it should be left to the states so long as they all agree with ME”).
But the biggest story here, in my opinion, isn’t the fact that there are now four states that offer marriage equality, and it isn’t the fact that one state has legislatively done so (though both of those are big deals). It’s the fact that CNN (among others I checked) didn’t even bother to put it on their home page and those that did, it wasn’t a leading story. That tells me that people are beginning to realize that in the years gay marriage has been legal in other states, the dire predictions of bigots haven’t come true. At worst, people are just deciding that, in this economy, there are bigger things for them to worry about than other people’s relationships. Fear is the only tool the bigots have. If that’s no longer working, then the war is already won.
Update: DC has voted to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
Update 2: Read the interview at the end of the link in the first update. Sure enough the bigot brigade is already declaring that the legislative victory wasn’t “the will of the people” because it wasn’t a direct vote. Hmmm… who could have predicted that? Oh yeah, I did..