Twenty-five years ago, Vermont became the first state in the country to legally recognize same-sex partnerships. The landmark civil unions law was the first step toward the marriage equality that exists for LGBTQ+ couples today.
But a quarter-century ago, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that the bill would become law. And on March 15, 2000, as the House debated the measure, Bill Lippert, the only openly gay member of the chamber, stood up and gave an impassioned speech.
"It will not end prejudice, it will not end hate," Lippert told his colleagues. "But it will grant rights. You may argue about whether they’re civil rights or other rights. But I'll tell you this: They’re rights I don’t have right now — and most everyone else in this chamber does."
Lippert’s speech is widely credited as a turning point in the debate over civil unions. Vermont Public’s Andrea Laurion recently spoke with Lippert about the speech, and his reflections on it now. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Bill Lippert: This was not a prepared speech. This was an extemporaneous sharing of things which mattered to me and that I wanted people to know. And there were times during that speech, and there were other parts of the speech, there were times when I wanted to just yell. I wanted to just raise my voice in protest. There were times I wanted to weep. Some of the amendments that were being offered were offensive to me as a gay man.
It was my opportunity to set the record straight, to be clear, that the gay and lesbian people I knew were people who formed deeply loving relationships, that I had the good fortune to be one of those people.
What happens in the course of getting to know other people when you're also sharing your life as a gay man or LGBTQ person, is that people get to have a picture of who you are. And I think that is part of what made a difference for my colleagues in the Legislature.Former Rep. Bill Lippert
Andrea Laurion: How would you even explain it to people, what it's like to come out to yourself and to others, and did you find that necessary at the time for other people to understand, or were you OK with other people not understanding?
Bill Lippert: I was out as a gay man when I was appointed by Gov. [Howard] Dean to the Legislature in 1994. But what happens in the course of getting to know other people when you're also sharing your life as a gay man or LGBTQ person, is that people get to have a picture of who you are. And I think that is part of what made a difference for my colleagues in the Legislature, for some of whom I was one of the first or few openly gay people that they got to know, and we built relationships and we worked on other issues together.
I think of my good friend now, good friend, John Edwards, who was a retired state trooper. We were assigned by the chair of the Judiciary Committee to work on drunken driving laws. And so the two of us, him as a retired state trooper and me as an alcohol and drug abuse counselor, spent a summer together researching what the current laws were, coming up with proposals and bringing proposals back to our committee. We built a relationship. He's a Republican. I'm a Democrat, but we both had deep concerns about alcohol and driving, and so we bonded over that.
In the course of that, I told him about my partner at the time, Enrique. John told me about his relationship with his wife and his children, so that when the issue of gay marriage surfaced, we actually had a relationship upon which to think about what it meant. And I think it impacted — in fact, I know it impacted — him as he made his decision to vote for the civil unions bill, despite the fact that he was well aware that the majority of people in his district in Swanton were not prepared to support that, at least not yet.
And that was a courageous decision, in my view, and it's part of why John, and there's a list, there were about 17 House and Senate members who lost their seats because they voted for civil unions — a number of whom knew before they voted that they would likely lose their seats.
Andrea Laurion: Before I'm done. Is there anything else you wanted to add, or anything else you'd like to talk about?
Bill Lippert: It's akin, it's a part of what we've been talking about. But I've come to understand that the speech I gave in March of 2000 touched many people, both in the House chamber that night, or that day, and subsequently. And I can remember the Burlington Free Press printed my speech the following day, and for days afterwards, I would have people stop me on the street, almost I mean, literally, every day for weeks and weeks, and they'd say, "You're Bill Lippert, aren't you?" And I realized what they were wanting to then tell me: how it had mattered to them what I had said and/or done during civil unions. And it was not my job to go, "Oh no, and that wasn't a big deal." My job was to let them tell me the story they were wanting to tell.
But I remember walking down Church Street one day and this young person came up to me and said, again, I could see by the look on their face like, "You're Bill Lippert, aren't you?" And they opened their wallet and they pulled out a folded, well-worn piece of newsprint, and it was my speech that had been reprinted in the Burlington Free Press. And they told me that they had kept it in their wallet with them every day since then, because it had meant so much to them in terms of being hopeful. That's the kind of experience and opportunity that I feel blessed to have been part of.
