People do this sort of thing every day, so this is nothing major for most people, but this is the first time it is legal in Vermont for two women to get married, so this is something I think of as somewhat important.

What I’m looking forward to, however, is the time in ten years when two women can get married to one another and not even think about what a big deal it is.  

This is not a personal story.  There are certain aspects of my personal life that I share gladly and willingly, but my relationship with my girlfriend, soon to be my wife, is not one of those things.  You won’t see photos of us, personal stories, or anything like that, after the fold.  

Instead, I will tell a story about politics, change, and evolution.

In February of 2004, Massachusetts was given a mandate by its supreme judicial court: enact marriage equality or fall afoul of the constitution.

It was that Spring that I watched most of the hearing at their constitutional convention, in which an attempt was made to amend the Massachusetts constitution in order to restrict marriage to one man and one woman.  

What’s interesting about this was that even most of the proponents of this amendment quickly gave into the equal protection under the law argument.  Here’s a (nearly half hour long) video which encompasses a lot of what happened during that period:

Here’s what I remember: the original version of this amendment was not intended to protect any same-sex couples.  Quickly, this changed.  And I mean quickly.  I got whiplash realizing what had happened here: suddenly, civil unions, which had been a major controversy in Vermont just a few years earlier, became the conservative fallback option.  

In the end, nothing happened in Massachusetts.  The legislature let the court’s decision stand, and same-sex marriage became legal without any major calamities, craziness or much of anything unusual or unexpected.  

It wasn’t until a few years later that Vermont started to address same-sex marriage.  The initial process was a series of town meetings, one of which I liveblogged here.

I should explain something about Vermont here: a lot of people think we’re this super-liberal state full of old hippies or something.  There is that element here, but we also have a lot of rural conservatives and some really vitriolic homophobia.  (for some examples, see the reader comments to this story from Vermont’s Rutland Herald).  Our fairly conservative governor even used anti-same-sex marriage rhetoric to fundraise (pdf file of his fundraising letter here).

So that’s why it’s still a bit of a shock that not one person opposing same-sex marriage appeared at that hearing I liveblogged.  Other hearings had similar results: no more than one or two scattered opponents.

Fast forward two years, to 2009.

At the beginning of the year, I never would have thought we’d be approaching same-sex marriage as part of the discussion in Montpelier.  But not only did we pass it, we passed it by significant margins.  The state senate passed it 26-4 (!).  The house passed it 95-52.  This was in late May and early April.

Our governor vetoed this bill.  He claimed it was a distraction from the real work of the legislator (unlike the extra time it took to deal with the override vote).

It came down to April 7th.

The requirement in Vermont for ovderiding a veto is 2/3rds of the members of each house.  This was easy in the Senate, with support for the override of 23-5.

The house was much closer, with a necessity of 100 votes, and only 95 supporting the original, it was a very tough call.  Not only did we win, we won by exactly the number we needed.  The final vote tally was 100-49 (see my original post on this here).

Here’s the relevant part of the bill that got passed.

§ 8. MARRIAGE DEFINITION

Marriage is the legally recognized union of two people. When used in this chapter or in any other statute, the word “marriage” shall mean a civil marriage.

That’s it.  It’s that simple.  It goes into effect today.

It’s about time.