Originally written in March

Originally written in March, 2001 as a letter to the Vermont State Legislators by a Chester, VT Justice of the Peace, the reflections below share his experiences with Civil Unions in Vermont -- and with the gay men and women who comprise them.

When he wrote the letter, he had officiated at 39 Civil Unions. He has now officiated at 110.

The Stack River Tribune
Wednesday, March 21, 2001

Here’s What I’ve Learned

Civil Unions One Year Later

by Jack Coleman

Perhaps some of the legislators discussing the civil union law this spring might be interested in my experience with it.

I will soon perform my fortieth civil union ceremony. That will surely match the number of traditional marriages that I have celebrated in ten plus years as Justice of the Peace. And I have been enriched by almost every one of those forty new unions, not in monetary terms (I donate what fees I receive to a town project closest to my heart) but in meeting so many normal, decent, loving and graceful couples.

There are two reasons why there have been so many of these unions. One is that the law is so new, and the numbers of people across the land who hoped such a law would some day be passed is large. In a sense, we’ve been dealing with a backlog of cases. And the reason why so many have come to me is that the owners of a bed-and-breakfast in Chester have a website on which they list my name as an available Justice.

Each couple that has sought a union is unique. But they share some common features.

They have most often been extraordinarily warm and kind people. No couple has shown a hint of throwing something in the face of those of us who are straight. Their attention has been focused on loving one another rather than on fighting the fears and prejudices of those opposed to such unions. I’ve seen no disrespect among them for heterosexuality. What I’ve seen is simply beliefs that love comes in different guises, and where it is based on full respect for one another and does no harm to others deserves our respect too.

Their stays in Vermont are brief and so they don’t meet many of us. But I’m struck by the fact that just about every contact has left the visitors feeling good about us and us feeling good about them.

Typically the ceremonies have been brief and simple. A few opening words, some short reading on love, an exchange of vows which the partners have written, a ring ritual, and some words on the permanence of the vows now taken – that’s it. Most of the time I add closing words on my hope that not only will their love and respect for one another grow deeper as the years pass but that they will show that love and respect to and for the rest of us.

Compared with the traditional marriages I have known, these have been more openly emotional. I have almost never had a bride or groom cry at a wedding, but tears in partners to a civil union have flowed freely. I did two unions, two days apart, for male couples from Los Angeles. In both cases one of the partners was an established doctor – and in both cases it was the doctor who cried as he spoke his words. One ceremony involved six former nuns from a Midwestern state.

It is that emotional factor that persuades me that the principal reason for these people making the trek to Vermont has little to do with establishing legal rights, which probably have no meaning in their home states anyway. The purpose is to have a public act of approval on their relationships. They seek acceptance. It is enough that the State officially does and that those whom they meet here welcome them.

My talks with these couples both before and after the ceremony drive home one other point to me. Homosexuality is not something they chose in order to be different or to be confrontational. They no more come to a point of saying “I’m going to be gay (or lesbian) from now on” than I come to one of saying “I think I’ll be heterosexual”. And knowing what they know about the venom directed against homosexuality by some people, it defies reason to imagine then having an “agenda” to lure others into single-sex preference.

A captain of a Southern city’s fire department made the strongest case on this. She spoke at length of how hard she had tried to be heterosexual because that’s what most people were. It didn’t work. The struggle was eating at her. Only when she accepted the truth that she was lesbian did she feel that she was honest with herself, with the men with whom she had relationships, and with the world. What I saw in that successful woman was a person now at peace and deeply committed to her partner.

I am glad that I have insisted that partners speak vows to one another as part of the ceremony. I want some ritual here as much as in more traditional rites. The words I have heard spoken have several times stunned me with their depth and honesty. Those words have come from professors at an Ivy League university and from a beautician, from West Coast television producers and a cable installer, from an editor and a police officer. They have come from a couple in their 70’s and couples in their 20’s. What some of these couples have already been through on their way to the civil union puts special meaning in words like “in sickness and in health, in happy times and in hard times”.

The civil union law obviously was not passed to add to my education. Yet that is a side effect for which I am grateful. I understand more fully the shapes that true love takes. I only wish that more legislators, both among the supporters and the opponents, had the experiences I have had since last July.

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