Last night Beth Robinson '86 addressed a capacity crowd of students and Upper Valley residents yesterday at the Rockefeller Center in her lecture entitled, "Civil Unions in Vermont: For Better or for Worse."
Along with her law partner Susan Murray and co-counsel Mary Bonauto from Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, Robinson told of when she represented three same-sex couples seeking marriage licenses in the Baker v. Vermont case in 1999.
The Vermont Supreme court's decision led to the passage in the state legislature of the first law in the United States allowing same-sex couples to enter into a legally recognized union.
Her sense of humor was a high point of the lecture. For example, noting that since Baker more than 1500 couples have entered into same-sex civil union statewide, Robinson quipped, "needless to say, I have been to a lot of weddings this year."
She also drew laughs from the crowd when asked how College students may get involved in the effort for same-sex union in New Hampshire.
"There is plenty of education that can be done right here at Dartmouth," she said with a pause, before adding with a smile, "unless things have changed a lot since I graduated."
But even though she recognized that Baker was "a big step," her speech was tinged with a hint of pessimism when addressing the case.
She said the court "shied away" from the ideals espoused in its decision. The court deferred simply legalizing same-sex marriage, and instead ordered the more conservative state legislature to craft a solution.
After much debate, Robinson and her co-counsels opted to support the legislature's bill, which did not grant "marriage" per se, but rather civil union with all the legal benefits of marriage. She noted that critics have labeled the bill "marriage by another name," and agreed with a comment from the crowd comparing the court decision to Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites in 1896.
But Robinson said she hoped that Baker would be a "temporary compromise," and mentioned the Netherlands, which enacted a similar civil union law that eventually led to full marriage status for same-sex couples.
