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This week marks the 25th anniversary of civil unions, which were the most sweeping grant of rights to gay couples in the nation when they became law on July 1, 2000.
Civil unions grew out of a lawsuit filed by three gay and lesbian couples who had been denied marriage licenses in Vermont. The lawsuit was known as Baker v. Vermont. In December 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled unanimously that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the same benefits of marriage as heterosexual couples. The court ordered the Vermont legislature to craft a law that would satisfy the ruling, either by legalizing same-sex marriage or by creating an equivalent partnership structure.
Vermont Supreme Court Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy wrote that the decision, “is simply a recognition of our common humanity.”
It would take until 2009 for Vermont to legalize same-sex marriage.
To mark the milestone, I spoke with four of the key participants behind civil unions. Stacy Jolles and Nina Beck were two of the six plaintiffs in Baker v. Vermont. Chief Justice Amestoy wrote the decision. Gov. Howard Dean signed civil unions into law. (Rep. Bill Lippert recounted how the Vermont legislature passed the historic law on The Vermont Conversation in an interview in April.)
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The unabridged audio version of this interview can be heard by clicking the audio bar above.
THE PLAINTIFFS
I first met Stacy Jolles and Nina Beck in their South Burlington home in 2000 when I covered the civil unions debate for Mother Jones. In my article, I described them cooing over their newborn son. Seth Jolles has since graduated from college and graduate school. Nina and Stacy had a civil union and were married as each of those opportunities became legal.
Stacy, now 67, a psychologist, and Nina, 69, a physical therapist, are now “semi-retired.” They have been familiar faces as the owners of the popular Burlington tea house, Dobra Tea, which they owned for 11 years and sold in 2021.
Stacy and Nina joined me on the Vermont Conversation in 2015 to talk about the US Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationally, known as the Obergefell decision.
This week, I asked them how it felt to be marking the 25th anniversary of civil unions.
Stacy Jolles
I can’t believe it’s been 25 years. That seemed like such a time of great hope and such a different time than it feels right now. So it is nice to go back and remember that times were better but it’s a little scary to realize that we made it 25 years. We may not make it 26.
Nina Beck
It’s an odd juxtaposition to be celebrating something that happened what feels like a very long time ago but really is only the lifetime of our son, and yet wondering what the future holds or if we’re going to lose those rights that we gained.
David Goodman
You were one of the three couples that were part of this landmark lawsuit. Tell us a little of your personal story as a couple and then what brought you to sue the state of Vermont?
Stacy Jolles
Stacy prior to our son Seth, who’s 25 now, we had a son, Noah. We were living in North Carolina and we knew at the time that in order to protect me as the non-biological parent, we needed to do a lot of legal paperwork. And so we did that. When Nina was giving birth, we tried to have a home birth but we ended up going to the hospital. And there was another pregnant couple, actually, that went in, and they didn’t ask the gentleman of the couple anything about paperwork, and they literally stopped me at the door and asked for my paperwork and what allowed me to be there. Who was I? Nina was struggling to give birth and Noah was in trouble in utero and I had to come up with the paperwork that allowed me to be there. So for me, that was a very pivotal moment in our lives and it laid the groundwork that marriage is really a legal contract primarily to protect the children. I don’t need the state to sanction my relationship. I don’t need any public validation other than I need legal protection for my kids. So when the opportunity came along, that was what was in my mind.
Nina Beck
Stacy and I were living in California before we moved to North Carolina and Vermont. In 1992, we had our big Jewish wedding, which was for our friends and family. That was of course not legally meaningful at all. At the time, we’d heard about a lawsuit brought by three couples in Hawaii and they tried to get marriage. They were the first state, and they failed. But that totally put the idea in my mind that this was a fight. This was this was maybe possible.
We decided together that if we live somewhere where it was possible to be involved in the work for legal civil marriage, that we wanted to do it. That was 1992, and we showed up in Vermont in 1996 in April and found the Vermont Freedom to Marry movement. We said, how can we be involved? We want to do this.
David Goodman
Talk about the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force and the marriage equality movement in Vermont that you were part of.
Stacy Jolles
Well, the movement was really Beth and Susan.
David Goodman
This was Beth Robinson, now a federal judge, and Susan Murray, your attorneys at the time.
Stacy Jolles
Exactly. A lot can be done with just two people who are dedicated. And they were absolutely phenomenal.
Nina Beck
It was a very grassroots movement in terms of trying to lift people’s awareness of what is civil marriage (and) why would we want it? Many people traveled all over the state to speak at events to try and gain public support for this.
David Goodman
What kind of responses did you get when you were out there tabling and at county fairs?
Stacy Jolles
Surprisingly we got mostly positive feedback. Both Nina and I were activists our whole lives and we had nothing to lose. It was our obligation since we were both lucky: our families weren’t going to disown us. We weren’t going to lose our jobs. We had so many privileges in so many ways that so many gay and lesbian people didn’t have then and still don’t have. It felt like an obligation to be the person that came forward when so many others couldn’t.
We experienced very little backlash. We got only one letter that was from someone who said they were going to pray for us. And I’m always happy to have somebody pray for me (laughs).
David Goodman
I remember being in the Vermont State House when civil unions was being debated in the winter in early 2000. It was intense. There were busloads of people, many from out of state and many with very noticeable southern accents who were from evangelical churches in the South. It felt very volatile. How did it feel to you?
Stacy Jolles
Well, we’re both martial artists. Not that we were going to get into any kind of physical altercation.
It was a different time. If I was in that situation now, I would feel very differently. Political violence has become much more normalized. It was moving times, emotional times, but I didn’t feel in danger.
Nina Beck
I feel like there was a difference between the way Vermont people who lived here reacted to us, even when they didn’t agree with us, as opposed to the people who came up from the south and came from other states. Those people were much more threatening. And also the Vermont folks, even those who were not on our side, didn’t want help. They told those people basically go away. We’re going to keep it local.
Later when we’d drive through the countryside and see the barns printed with Take Back Vermont, it wasn’t warm and welcoming, but I honestly didn’t feel in danger.
David Goodman
The Baker decision was a win for advancing LGBTQ rights, but Stacy, you’ve told me that you felt it was a loss. Explain how it could be both.
Stacy Jolles
When the decision came down and the (Vermont) Supreme Court basically punted (same-sex partnership) to the legislature, I felt like we lost. The Supreme Court did not rule for marriage. Intellectually, I recognize that you take two steps forward, one step back. I get that it was progress, but I felt like we lost. I felt like the Supreme Court said, No, we’re not going to give you marriage. (Civil unions) wasn’t going to protect my kids in the way I needed them protected. At the time I was working full time and staying home with Seth, and it wasn’t going to protect his rights with the over 2000 federal advantages from marriage.
Nina Beck
We live on Lake Champlain, and if we traveled across that lake to New York State, our civil union wouldn’t necessarily be recognized there. What if we went across the lake for the day and got in trouble and needed medical care? There were many, many important protections that marriage has, that civil unions left out. It was separate but unequal.
David Goodman
It took another decade for Vermont to pass same-sex marriage in 2009 over the veto of Governor Jim Douglas. How did that feel?
Stacy Jolles
That was awesome. That felt like a step in the right direction towards federal marriage being legal in all states. That was uplifting.
David Goodman
Did you get a civil union and then get married?
Nina Beck
Yes, we had a civil union ceremony, which included our local representative coming to our house, acting as Justice of the Peace, sitting in our living room and signing a piece of paper. We were not very excited about it, but we wanted it legally in place. When we won marriage, we had a great party in the boathouse at the Burlington waterfront. We recreated our big Jewish wedding, and Beth (Robinson) officiated. That was a great party.
David Goodman
Twenty-five years after civil unions in Vermont, there is intense blowback against LGBTQ rights. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled against LGBTQ rights in several cases, allowing parents to opt-out their children from school classes that include LGBTQ-themed books, and banning gender-affirming health care for transgender youth. How fearful are you that the rights that you won could be undone?
Stacy Jolles
I think they will be undone.
I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, as is Nina. So we were raised to view governments like the one we’re experiencing now in a very different way than most Americans might view it. I think it’s going to get very bad and I’m just going to be active until the very last minute. I can be active trying to protect young LGBTQ people’s rights, particularly young transgender people. And I think we’re going to have to fight harder than we have before.
Nina Beck
Not to make too many parallels, but the Jews of Europe became extremely assimilated, particularly Austria and Germany, and kind of forgot that antisemitism was real. And there’s a way in which I think young people today who have grown up in the last 25 years without knowledge of homophobia in the way that we who grew up in the 60s and 70s felt it. So it’s a shock to them. It’s not surprising to me, but it is scary in a way that we haven’t seen in a long time.
Every day some more rights are lost. I don’t want to go back to living that way, but I know how to and we’ll just keep fighting. We’ll just have to keep fighting and not be shocked and horrified that these things are going away but rather activated by it.
David Goodman
You both lived through a time when it seemed impossible that same-sex marriage could win. In 1996, President Clinton passed the Defense of Marriage Act. The tide was not in your favor in the late 1990s. What is your advice to the next generation of activists about what’s needed to prevail even at a time like this?
Stacy Jolles
We have to be vigilant and brave and as out there as we possibly can. It’s going to get really bad, it’s going to get really scary, and we still are going to have to stand up and fight.
Nina Beck
Don’t back down.
We have to be as strong as humanly possible. We can look to AIDS activists for tactics. We can look to the civil rights workers for tactics. There’s so many organizations that have gone before us. We just have to adopt the tactics of our predecessors and do it again.
David Goodman
Any last thoughts?
Nina Beck
We continue to feel very privileged to live in the great state of Vermont where we do have rights and privileges as gay and lesbian people. Vermont is the only state that has no laws pending or on the books against trans people. That’s remarkable. We are very lucky to be here.
THE CHIEF JUSTICE
Jeffrey Amestoy served as attorney general of Vermont from 1985 to 1997, winning seven elections, five of them as the nominee of both the Republican and Democratic parties. In 1997, Governor Howard Dean appointed Amestoy to be Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court. Two years later, he wrote the Baker decision. Amestoy retired as chief justice in 2004 and later was a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Amestoy, 78, spoke with me at his home in Waterbury Center with a stunning view of Mount Mansfield. I asked him what led him to write the most famous line from the Baker decision, that legalizing same-sex partnerships was “simply a recognition of our common humanity.”
Jeffrey Amestoy
I was cognizant of the extent to which a pure legal analysis that dictated a result to the people of Vermont on an issue that divided them was something to be concerned about. I thought if we could frame the issue in terms that folks would respond to, they would begin to see what it meant in terms of the rights involved. So the phrase “common humanity” was one that I had hoped would resonate. I think it helped structure the public debate, because it became not a question of whether a special class should get special treatment, but I think it helped promote a dialog in which people spoke of their own personal experiences and related it to common humanity.
The structure of the legal analysis was based on the common benefits clause. So it became a mechanism to try to encourage a public dialog that spoke to the heart of the matter, which was really human relationships.
David Goodman
How aware were you that your decision would have national implications and thrust Vermont into the middle of a national culture war?
Jeffrey Amestoy
I was aware of the significance of the issue to a substantial portion of the country. Folks had fought long and hard, like Beth Robinson and Susan Murray and other advocates for same-sex recognition. You couldn’t be ignorant of the extent to which it had been turned into a real divisive political issue. The Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 — that’s three years before our opinion. The (U.S.) Senate passed (DOMA), 85 to 14. Senator Leahy and Senator Jeffords both voted for it. That law said that marriage was between a man and a woman, and beyond that, no state was required to recognize another state’s same-sex marriage. That framed the political culture. It was a reminder to me that any decision that Vermont came up with was going to precipitate a national debate.
David Goodman
You also knew that other state courts had waded into this terrain. The Hawaii Supreme Court in 1993 and Anchorage (Alaska) Superior Court in 1998 had both legalized same-sex marriage, only to have voters in those states pass constitutional amendments that reversed the decision. How did that affect you as you approached the Baker decision, knowing that you could spark a backlash that could result in this being a very short lived decision?
Jeffrey Amestoy
It was fundamental to my perception of how we ought to weigh the consequences of the decision if our rationale was trying to advance equal rights for same-sex couples. To me, one of the paramount determinations to be made was how likely was a decision of the court going to advance that? Would a same-sex marriage decision directed from the court advance that? Based on the experiences of Alaska and Hawaii, (legalizing same-sex marriage) would have certainly precipitated a constitutional amendment in Vermont that would have found a lot of public support that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman. That would have cut off the ability for a court to deal with the matter if the Vermont State Constitution was amended.
In terms of the climate of the time, between the decision of our court in December 1999 and the civil unions passage in April 2000, voters in California, a liberal state, passed (Proposition 22), a referendum that defined marriage as only between a man and a woman. That passed 61 to 39 percent. That was an indicator of the extent to which there wasn’t going to be a straight line from a Supreme Court decision, even from Vermont, that was going to then lead directly to the recognition of same-sex marriage legally in this country. So all those were part of my framing of the issue.
David Goodman
You’re describing a very hostile national climate regarding same-sex marriage. What persuaded you to go a different way?
Jeffrey Amestoy
We tried to look at the issue of the claim for same-sex marriage rights in the context of the Vermont constitution. You had a culture and a history of Vermont in terms of the creation of the common benefits clause. What persuaded me was a legal analysis that we could draw from Vermont’s constitutional culture and one I think that was consistent with Vermont values. So from that standpoint, beyond whatever our personal consideration about the issue was, the claim for same-sex marriage benefits in Vermont resonated with our constitutional framework. Our decision attempted to advance that in a way that would lead to what it did lead to, which was eventually an embrace of same-sex marriage by Vermonters.
David Goodman
The Baker decision legalized either marriage or an equivalent partnership structure. It took another 10 years before marriage passed over the veto of Governor Jim Douglas. Why didn’t you just legalize same-sex marriage in 1999?
Jeffrey Amestoy
I thought it would precipitate a constitutional amendment in Vermont, as was being done in 36 other states and was being done in California, that would compel states through their own state constitutions that would foreclose courts from deciding the issue. The constitutional amendments in each state would have provisions that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
The response even to the civil union decision indicated how difficult it would have been in that climate in that time to have even Vermonters abide by that decision in the Supreme Court. If you look at the surveys at the time, Vermonters were not embracing the idea of same-sex marriage, and they were not embracing the idea of civil unions either. So it became a much more difficult task for the legislature. Not that what we’d done was an easy thing to do, but the difficult and hard work (that) we honor 25 years later was the work of the Vermont legislature and, of course, Vermonters themselves.
David Goodman
What does this 25 year milestone mean to you?
Jeffrey Amestoy
It makes me proud of Vermont. I’m from Vermont. It was a testament to my own faith in the judgment of Vermonters. What Vermonters should be proud of is that it advanced the extraordinary significance of same-sex marriage in this country in a way that I think would have taken longer and perhaps had a more difficult route. Vermonters, as I’d hoped they would, rose to the occasion, as they’ve done historically in a number of other areas too.
David Goodman
What did you feel when the U.S. Supreme Court passed the Obergefell decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015?
Jeffrey Amestoy
It came much sooner than I thought. At the time of Baker, if someone had asked me would the U.S. Supreme Court reach a decision legalizing same-sex marriage in my lifetime, I would have said no. I go again to the point of how a constructive, realistic approach to moving public discourse that recognizes common humanity probably moved that to a much quicker decision by the United States Supreme Court than I would have thought possible. That was a testament to what we had done in Vermont.
THE GOVERNOR
Howard Dean, 76, became governor in 1991 on the death in office of Governor Richard Snelling. Dean was subsequently elected to five two-year terms, becoming the longest serving governor in Vermont history.
David Goodman
How did you feel about same-sex marriage in the mid to late 1990s? Democrats nationally were not particularly supportive.
Gov. Howard Dean
President Clinton wasn’t supportive because he was a great politician and could read the polls. I was not a great champion at the time. I remember exactly where I was when the (Baker) court decision came down. I was in Burlington at a meeting on education, and somebody threw a microphone in front of my face and said, What do you think of this? And my response was a great dismay to people who later became very close friends (like Rep.) Bill Lippert.
I said, “Well, it makes me uncomfortable, same as everybody else.” And I was uncomfortable.
I grew up in the 60s and when I was in high school, it was unthinkable to say who you were if you were gay. There was plenty of homophobia. I grew up in a different era. I came to change my mind as governor, because it was actually quite simple. The same-sex marriage people basically outlined about 1700 rights that you could have if you were a married heterosexual person that you could not have if you were in a gay partnership. And as soon as that happened, I realized this was a civil rights bill. It wasn’t just about marriage, (it was) about equality under the law. There was a whole population of Americans that was discriminated against and so something had to be done about it. But I was somebody who had to be brought along because of my upbringing and because of the generation I come from.
David Goodman
It’s helpful for people to understand where things were in the 1990s. Even for a Democratic governor like yourself, this was not a simple issue.
Gov. Howard Dean
Yeah, it was complicated. But once it got distilled to the civil rights issue, that was easy. And then (Reps.) Tom Little and Bill Lippert, who were respectively the chairman and vice chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House, came to me and said, Look, we can’t get marriage out of our committee, so we’re going to call it civil unions. And essentially, they said a civil union is going to be marriage by another name. And so I said, Look, you guys are the ones on the firing line. You have to do it. And of course, Bill (Lippert), because he was gay, if he was advising this course, then that was sort of the gold standard. And then it went to the Senate. It passed. And that was brutal. In the House, absolutely brutal.
The (House speech) I remember the most was (Rep.) John Edwards, who was this former state trooper from a very conservative part of the state, which is Franklin County. And he gave up his seat. There was (Rep.) Marion Milne. She gave up her seat. She got up and said she was from Barre and didn’t like this. And she said basically, this is the right thing to do. She didn’t flinch.
David Goodman
Unlike anyone else involved in this issue, you had to run statewide after passing civil unions in 2000. This was the heyday of the Take Back Vermont movement, which really sprung up in response to civil unions being passed. You won re-election in 2000 with 50.5% of the vote, barely enough to keep it out of the legislature…
Gov. Howard Dean
…Which was a Republican legislature after all was said and done because of civil unions.
David Goodman
Many legislators who supported civil unions were defeated in November 2000. So there was a political price to pay. What impact did you think civil unions would have on your political future?
Gov. Howard Dean
I hate to say this, and nobody’s going to believe it, but I didn’t care.
This is where the problem with most politicians is. If an issue like this comes along and you conclude that it’s a matter of civil rights, and you duck it for the convenience of your election, you’re wasting your time in politics. Which, of course, is what the problem in Congress is today. I’d say 100% of the Republicans and a good portion of the Democrats are wasting their time because they shouldn’t be in politics. If you’re not willing to stand up for something, why are you in the business? And so for me, it was easy.
David Goodman
You signed civil unions into law in 2000 and it took nine years, and over the veto of your successor, Governor Douglas, for same-sex marriage to be legalized in Vermont. Do you have any second thoughts that perhaps just legalizing gay marriage in 2000 would have been the better move?
Gov. Howard Dean
We couldn’t possibly get it through the legislature. If Bill Lippert comes to me and says, I can’t get this through the legislature, and Tom Little – (a Republican) who in all states other than this one would be a Democrat — if those two people come to me and say they can’t get the bill through…
In politics, sometimes you have to take half and come back and get the other half later. What we did was the first marriage equivalent bill in the entire United States of America. And I think if we hadn’t done what we did, that would have set the cause back for years. We were the model. Even though it wasn’t full marriage — but it basically was as the two described it in the privacy of my office, this is marriage in everything but name — and that’s what it was.
David Goodman
What do you think was the national significance of Vermont’s civil unions bill?
Gov. Howard Dean
I think people saw it as gay marriage. It was sort of the lead issue. It happened. I think the next state that did it was Massachusetts, and they did it by court order.
David Goodman
Today we see a backlash against LGBTQ issues, with the US Supreme Court and Congress limiting rights. Do you think this is a backlash that began right after you signed that law?
Gov. Howard Dean
This is an organized conservative attempt to overthrow rights which the vast majority of American people support. This (U.S. Supreme) Court essentially is bought and paid for. The court system in this country is a disaster and thank God it wasn’t like that when all this stuff was going on.
David Goodman
In the long arc of your political career, where do you rank civil unions among the things that you’ve accomplished?
Gov. Howard Dean
I think the only thing that was more important was getting the waiver from the Clinton administration to insure all kids under 300% of poverty. Virtually every child in the state has health insurance, and that’s been going on since 1992. So that one I’d have to put first, but I’d put civil unions second.
In terms of personal challenges, civil unions was by far the first, because I didn’t really for sure understand what it was to be a public servant until you have to make a decision like that, where you know the public is going to be really upset. I didn’t know I had it in me to do what was right instead of what was politically expedient.
I never regretted. I had to wear a bulletproof vest all summer during my campaign because the threats were so awful, not just in state, mostly out of state, and all the parades I had to go to, and the meetings that I went to, and tremendous amount of money spent by the Vermont taxpayers on making sure that nobody could take a shot at me. But it never crossed my mind.
Why are you in politics if you don’t stand up for anything that needs to be stood up for?
