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By: KEVIN RIORDAN COMMENTS
 
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hateful; one letter writer described homosexuals as “filthy disease carrying
rodents.”
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| David Moats, author of ‘trong>Civil Wars: A
Battle for Gay Marriage,’ said
he wanted his book, scheduled to be released Feb. 2, to be a human story. ‘I
didn’t want to just rehash the news. I also wanted to put in the
context of the national movement,’ he said. |
As “Civil Wars” points out, the very viciousness of some of the
anti-gay testimony, letters and e-mails made some uncommitted legislators more
sympathetic to civil unions. And as Moats writes, the entire process achieved “a
major goal for the freedom to marry advocates” in that it put “a
human face on the issue of gay rights.”
“The real lesson of the book is the importance of standing up for what
is right,” said Wolfson, whose organization advocates nothing less than
full marriage equality between gays and straights. “Vermont took a great
step in the right direction, but it didn’t do the right thing.”
“Civil Wars” shows that Vermont’s experience, however relevant
to the ongoing national debate, was somewhat idiosyncratic. With only 608,827
people in its 9,250 square miles, the state was able to have a public conversation
about same-sex marriage largely unmediated by the media and the spinmeisters
and the focus groups and all the other features of the elaborate apparatus
of contemporary politics.
Vermont also has a tradition that combines flinty independence with frontier
egalitarianism (after all, one may need to rely upon one’s neighbors
during the long, harsh winters). And its churches are generally not fundamentalist,
unless one counts the Roman Catholic Church, which campaigned strenuously against
civil unions.
The first state to outlaw slavery (in 1777), Vermont held its first Gay Pride
parade only in1983, a full decade after such events had become common across
much of the United States. But by the time the three couples applied for marriage
licenses in 1997, the horrific bashing of a Burlington gay bar patron had inspired
the state to include homosexuality in its 1990 hate crimes law. And in 1993,
Vermont authorized the adoption of children by same-sex couples.
“Civil Unions” is full of these and other fascinating details.
According to the book, the statehouse reporter for the Associated Press was
openly gay, leading to accusations of “bias” from the right wing
(though these same media critics seemed unperturbed that
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