By Armita Mirkarimi, Staff Writer
Twenty-five years after the Vermont Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision in Baker v. State, the same-sex couples who challenged the state’s marriage laws continue sharing their story with new audiences, weaving together lessons of perseverance, grassroots organizing, and the slow arc of justice that continues to bend forward even in challenging times.
On a recent evening at the Windsor Welcome Center, Peter Harrigan — one of the original plaintiffs in the landmark case — presented his and his husband Stan Baker’s experiences to audiences as part of Vermont Humanities’ speaker series. Their presentation, titled “Baker v. State: Making Headlines, Making Change,” comes at a moment when LGBTQ+ rights face new challenges across the country, making their message of sustained activism more relevant than ever.
“Several people have come up to me over the last month and said, ‘So do you think we’re gonna lose what we have? What should we do?’” Baker told the Standard this week. “I go back to Martin Luther King’s statement — the arc of justice is long, but it bends toward justice. We were never guaranteed a lack of struggle.”
The case began in 1997 when three same-sex couples, including Baker and his partner Harrigan, were denied marriage licenses by their respective town clerks. What followed was a legal battle that would make Vermont the first state to recognize civil unions, fundamentally changing the landscape for LGBTQ+ rights nationwide.
The December 20, 1999 Vermont Supreme Court decision didn’t grant same-sex couples the right to marry outright, but it ordered the state legislature to provide same-sex couples with the same legal benefits and protections afforded to married different-sex couples. The decision held that the state’s prohibition on same-sex marriage denied rights granted by the Vermont Constitution, marking the first time a state supreme court had ever reached such an outcome.
The court’s ruling left it to the legislature to determine how to remedy the constitutional violation — either by allowing same-sex marriage or creating an alternative legal mechanism. The Vermont Legislature chose the latter, passing the nation’s first civil unions law in April 2000, which took effect on July 1, 2000.
But the path to that historic legislation was far from smooth. Baker and Harrigan’s presentation, built around newspaper clippings from the era, captures both the hope and the fierce opposition their case generated.
“Going through the boxes and boxes of clippings that we had, it was interesting because there were some that were kind of triggering and some I had just plain forgotten about — steps in the process and little reversals,” Harrigan reflected. “But what I try to bring into the presentation is that we’re really celebrating what happened while not ignoring the very difficult bumps along the road.”
The most visible opposition came from a group called “Take Back Vermont,” which emerged in response to the court decision and the legislature’s civil unions law. In the elections that fall, six incumbent legislators who supported civil unions lost in the September primaries, five Republicans and one Democrat. In November, another 11 civil union supporters lost their seats in the legislature.
“There was a whole resistance movement before the lawsuit was progressing through the courts,” Baker explained. “Take Back Vermont wanted to have a referendum, but Vermont does not have that system—they don’t allow the public to interfere with justice in that way.”
Vermont’s lack of a referendum system proved crucial to the case’s success, distinguishing it from Hawaii, where a similar court victory was later overturned by popular vote. The opposition also took more extreme forms. In 1999, members of the Westboro Baptist Church came to Vermont to protest, and Baker and Harrigan found themselves featured on the hate group’s website — an experience Baker now views with a mixture of gravity and dark humor.
“It’s certainly not something you would wish on anyone, but it does get noticed and create support,” he said.
The “Take Back Vermont” signs that proliferated during the 2000 election season became an inadvertent symbol of the cultural divide the case exposed. Baker recalled visitors to Vermont asking, “Does ‘Take Back Vermont’ mean we should buy maple syrup and bring it home with us? What exactly does that mean?”
The counter-slogan adopted by marriage equality advocates — “Take Vermont Forward” — proved more enduring. “I think it’s a lovely antidote to that whole, you know, false nostalgia for times that were actually quite depressing or oppressive,” Baker said. “Sure, let’s go back to the 1950s when women didn’t go to college, or back to the 1890s when they couldn’t vote.”
For Baker, who teaches at Saint Michael’s College, the experience reinforced the importance of local political engagement. “In that year 2000, when I voted in Vermont, I knew personally all the people that I voted for and I’d been hugged by many of them,” he said. “It’s so important in Vermont and other places to remember that there really is not that much distance between you and the authority — it’s important to participate and be part of the discussion.”
The presentation comes during Pride Month 2025, as LGBTQ+ rights face renewed challenges in many states. But rather than dwelling on setbacks, Baker and Harrigan emphasize the lessons their experience offers for current activists.
“When people are marginalized these days — immigrants, women, elderly people, people with disabilities, particularly trans people — our job is to continue to be present, to make our cause known,” Baker said. “I think in the end, love will win.”
Harrigan emphasized the step-by-step nature of social change that his presentation illustrates through its chronological newspaper clippings. “Things don’t happen overnight. They take endurance, and endurance leads to hope eventually, which leads to love. That step-by-step quality is really important and reassuring — an antidote to fear.”
The Vermont experience also demonstrated how opposition can ultimately strengthen a movement. Baker noted that some religious congregations that initially opposed civil unions later changed their positions after seeing that “the sky didn’t fall” and that civil unions didn’t attack heterosexual marriage as opponents had claimed.
“As a state, we had to deal with and look at the underground homophobia that had always been there,” Baker reflected. “Those times when the lid gets taken off some kind of oppressive sentiment are actually good for the state in the long run because we had to have conversations and deal with it.”
The presentation also highlighted stories of individual courage that emerged from the civil unions debate, including a teacher in the Windsor area and a legislator who voted for civil unions despite the political risk. “There are all these stories that have come out of listening to each other, telling our story, but also being brave and doing the right thing,” Harrigan said.
Today, Vermont allows full marriage equality — the state legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, making civil unions a historical stepping stone rather than the final destination. But for Baker and Harrigan, the lessons from their journey remain deeply relevant.
“The importance of local action and resistance and leading the way toward change, toward equality and dignity, is absolutely always essential,” Baker emphasized in his concluding remarks. “I don’t know whether we will lose, through various Supreme Court challenges, some of the freedom-to-marry rights that we have now. But we need to be ready to resist and to protest and to take action if those things happen.”
For audiences hearing their story for the first time, particularly young people who may see Vermont as having always been progressive, the presentation serves as both history lesson and call to action. The state’s current progressive reputation wasn’t inevitable — it was earned through the sustained efforts of people willing to stand up for their rights and the rights of others.
Baker, who was writing a sermon during the interview with the Standard, noted parallels between different struggles for justice, “Juneteenth reminds us that Union troops came to Galveston, Texas, to tell enslaved people there that they had been free for two years. That’s a great day of celebration and hope for oppressed people. On the other hand, soon after that, all the Jim Crow laws went into effect, which tried to limit the freedom that people had been given.”
The lesson, he suggested, is that progress is never guaranteed and always requires vigilance. “We’ve had great success, but there’s still a long way to go.”
As Vermont celebrates another Pride Month and the nation grapples with renewed attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, the story of Baker v. State offers both inspiration and instruction. It reminds us that transformative change often comes through the sustained efforts of ordinary people willing to challenge unjust systems — and that the work of building a more just society is never finished.
The newspaper clippings in Harrigan’s PowerPoint tell a story of headlines that became history. But as the two emphasized in their presentation, that history is still being written, one conversation, one vote, one act of courage at a time.
