Viewpoint Benefits, protections,
responsibilities
By CHUCK COLBERT
A new civil union law
took effect this month in Vermont, granting gay and lesbian couples more than
300 of the benefits, protections and responsibilities previously reserved to
married heterosexual couples - everything from health insurance benefits to
inheritance rights, taxation, legal parenthood and hospital visitation.
As gay and lesbian couples obtain civil union certificates, or
licenses, and have them certified by a justice of the peace, clergy member or
judge, Vermont - as well as the nation - takes a bold step into a better
future. The new law goes farther than other state legislation in offering fair
treatment and equal benefits to gay couples.
This historic new law is a legislative compromise resulting from a
Vermont Supreme Court decision last December. We hold that the state is
constitutionally required to extend to same-sex couples the common benefits and
protections that flow from marriage under Vermont law, wrote Chief
Justice Jeffrey L. Amestoy in a unanimous (five-judge) court decision.
Two groups - the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church and Take
it to the People, a grassroots coalition supporting traditional marriage - have
led the laws detractors.
Take it to the People is a curious misnomer because
the people already have had much to say. After four months of spirited debate,
the Vermont House of Representatives approved the civil union bill by a vote of
79 to 68; and the Senate passed it by a vote of 19 to 11. The governor signed
the bill into law last April.
This new law, like other civil rights achievements, derives from a
combination of court decisions and legislative acts. Thats how the
democratic process works in representative democracy.
It is important to keep in mind, however, that civil union is the
issue in Vermont - not religious or civil marriage. For religious traditions
that permit it, clergy members will be at liberty to certify civil unions under
the new law. It will not require any member of the clergy - including Catholic
priests - to do so.
Nonetheless, Bishop Kenneth A. Angell, representing the
states Catholic hierarchy, feels so disappointed and
disenfranchised that he has entered the political debate, calling
for the defense of marriage as a sacred covenant between one man and one
woman, entered into for life and open to the possibility of children and
family. Angell and his allies advocate a constitutional amendment to
enshrine into law his religious traditions definition of marriage.
Angell and 15 other New England Catholic bishops have slammed the
Vermont legislature and its civil union law: Such legislation will
undermine cultural and religious respect for marriage, they wrote in a
statement issued by Bostons Cardinal Bernard Law. The statement even
accused the Vermont legislature of prepar[ing] the way for an attack on
the well-being of society itself. The bishops offered no statistics, no
studies, no evidence supporting such irrational claims.
I know many gay people who not only honor their fathers and
mothers, but also greatly respect marriage and the family. My own story is an
example. I enjoyed the unconditional love of my parents who were married for 46
years until my fathers death a year ago.
If those hyperbolic charges from the false prophets of doom are
not enough, consider this one: Those seeking to redefine marriage for
their own purposes are the ones who are trying to impose their values on the
rest of the population, the bishops wrote.
That charge serves a convenient purpose - cloaking the regional
hierarchys irrational fear of homosexuality. The bishops use the issue of
civil unions as a political tactic to divert the faithful from a vitally
important issue for the Catholic church - an honest dialogue about
homosexuality.
Meanwhile, mainstream Protestant denominations - Presbyterians and
United Methodists, for example - openly debate their clergys
participation in same-sex commitment ceremonies. Other Protestant denominations
- Unitarian Universalists and the United Church of Christ - already permit
their ministers to bless committed, monogamous same-sex relationships. Last
March, Reform Judaism declared that gay relationships are worthy of
affirmation through appropriate Jewish ritual, freeing their rabbis to
officiate at same-sex unions.
Vermonts new law is not a redefinition of marriage. Rather,
civil unions provide a parallel system of responsibilities and protections for
gay couples - the same ones enjoyed by married heterosexuals under the
states marriage laws. For now, the civil unions law is a viable political
compromise. It also reaffirms a healthy separation of church and state, one
that fully that respects all religious traditions, including Roman
Catholicism.
Chuck Colbert is a lay graduate divinity student at the Weston
Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass. He serves on the board of the
National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. His e-mail address is
CrcIIIUND@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, July 28,
2000
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