Vermont Legislature Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

MONTPELIER, Vt. — The Vermont Legislature on Tuesday overrode Gov. Jim Douglas’s veto of a bill allowing gay couples to marry, mustering one more vote than needed to preserve the measure.

The step makes Vermont the first state to allow same-sex marriage through legislative action instead of a court ruling. The law goes into effect Sept. 1.

Approval had been expected in the Senate, where the vote was 23 to 5.

But the outcome in the House of Representatives was not clear until the final moments of a long roll call, when Rep. Jeff Young, a Democrat who voted against the bill last week, reversed his position. In the end the vote was 100 to 49, just slightly more than the required two-thirds majority of members present.

After the final tally, cheers erupted in both legislative chambers of the State House and in the hallways outside, and several lawmakers on both sides of the debate looked stunned.

“It’s a great day for equality,” said State Representative Margaret Cheney, a Democrat from Norwich. “People saw this as an equality issue, and we’re proud that Vermont has led the way without a court order to provide equal benefits.”

The override came days after the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that not permitting gay marriage there was unconstitutional. Vermont, which in 2000 became the first state to adopt civil unions for gay couples, now brings the number of states allowing same-sex marriage to four; the others are Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa.

The battle over the issue has largely been centered in the Northeast. Massachusetts became the first state in the country to make same-sex marriage a reality in 2004 when its supreme court ruled that it was required under the state’s Constitution, which contains an equal-protection clause. Connecticut followed in October 2008. .

Two other states in the region recognize civil unions — New Jersey and New Hampshire — and gay rights advocates have waged a campaign in hopes of making same-sex marriage legal in every state in New England by 2012. Before Tuesday, Vermont, like New Jersey and New Hampshire, had also allowed civil unions, a step that gay rights advocates say helps ease the transition to laws allowing same-sex marriage. Just last month, the House of Representatives in New Hampshire voted narrowly to approve a bill to legalize such marriages, which moves to the state Senate and could be considered there as early as this week.

But organizers in Maine and Rhode Island have opposed the civil-union approach, which they say makes same-sex couples appear unequal. Instead, they have sought to change the laws directly. In Rhode Island, for example, gay rights advocates plan to wait until 2011, when the Republican governor, Donald L. Carcieri, who opposes gay marriage, leaves office.

Still, opponents of gay marriage have argued that the success of the movement in New England is more political than populist, pointing out that for the most part, the courts rather than the voters have been the main actors. More than two dozen other states have banned gay marriage in recent years after residents of those states voted for restrictions. Several other states have same-sex marriage measures before their legislatures this year, including New York, New Jersey and Washington.

Steve Cable, the president of Vermont Renewal and the spokesman for the Vermont Marriage Advisory Council, two groups that opposed the measure, said he felt the process had been "stacked" in favor of the bill’s passage from the start, with the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate rushing the bill through and not giving opponents enough time or opportunity to state their case.

"The whole process has been shameful from the very beginning," Mr. Cable said. "If the process had been fair in allowing both sides to have reasonable debate on this and allowing all of Vermont to engage, then fine, let whatever happens happen. But that’s not the way this came down and I think the next election cycle is going to be very interesting."

He said that opponents of same-sex marriage would work hard to oust the five Republican House members who supported both the bill and the override.

"I can assure you right now that there are people in Vermont calling around their districts looking for someone to run primary races against them," he said. "People are upset."

Senator Richard Sears, head of the Senate judiciary committee and a powerful supporter of the bill, said that a number of legislators would “absolutely” be in danger of losing their seats, whichever side they were on. But he disagreed that the vote, while fast, was unfair. The civil union debate in 2000 was “very long and consuming,” Mr. Sears said, while the issues this time were “highly emotional but not complicated,” allowing the legislature to pass the measure relatively quickly.

In California, voters last fall effectively reversed a court decision that legalized gay marriage when they narrowly approved Proposition 8, which amended the State Constitution to ban such marriages. The California Supreme Court is considering a petition to overturn the ban, but many legal scholars have predicted that it will be upheld.

California’s legislature initially approved same-sex marriage in 2005, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the measure, saying he did not support gay marriage but supported domestic partnership programs.