BEYOND CIVIL UNIONS: From Bay Windows

Anti-gay extremists have long argued that civil unions are only a steppingstone to same-sex marriage, and over the next couple years, activists in Connecticut and Vermont hope to prove them right.

Gay marriage proponents in Vermont, after years on the defensive from the anti-gay backlash that resulted from their first-in-the-nation civil union bill in 2000, hired Robyn Maguire, former field director of the Massachusetts Freedom to Marry Coalition, to rebuild the state's grassroots network in preparation for a new legislative push for full marriage rights. In Connecticut, where civil unions passed last April and go into effect Oct. 1, activists hope a combination of legislative advocacy and a lawsuit filed by Boston's Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) will move the state beyond civil unions.

Openly gay Connecticut state Representative Mike Lawlor (D-East Haven) said a same-sex marriage bill could be viable in the legislature as early as 2007. ...

It took Vermont activists five years to recover from the backlash to civil unions, but in Connecticut the push for marriage is going full steam ahead. Connecticut activists, led by the coalition Love Makes a Family, have long focused on lobbying and grassroots activism rather than on legal challenges to marriage laws, and their work bore fruit when the state became the second to legalize civil unions and the first to do so without a court order.

Yet the most high-profile effort to win marriage rights in the state is a suit filed on behalf of eight plaintiff couples in New Haven Superior Court by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), whose Goodridge suit in Massachusetts led the state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004. GLAD filed briefs in the suit, known as Kerrigan-Mock v. Department of Public Health, July 28, and GLAD attorney Bennett Klein said he expects the court to hear arguments by the end of the year.

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posted by Eve at 2:31 PM | link

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