You are here: Home » Featured » National Group Attempts To Interfear With Same-Sex Marriage Bill in Vermont

National Group Attempts To Interfear With Same-Sex Marriage Bill in Vermont

A national group bent on preventing same-sex marriage from moving forward in Vermont has launched a robo-call effort to put an end to S.115, but they may be too late. The Vermont House has already moved to have the vote on S.115 Thursday rather than Friday.

The robo-calls are going out to Vermonters in order to urge them to contact their Representatives to vote against the bill. The group, National Organization for Marriage, has several offices throughout the nation, and are refusing to take any questions from the media. Their calls are an attempt to end run the legislature’s decision to dump all correspondence from outside the state. Unfortunately for NOM, those who are already inclined to call or write their Representatives may already have done so. Some have already told their Representatives in person about their feelings regarding this issue, and no, not at the open forum held by the Senate. The typical Vermonter likely knows their Representative if not their Senator, and has spoken to them in person inside and outside of the election seasons. Many Vermonters have met their Representative while they were out shopping, or on the street, or when they have patronized their business. Vermont is not, say, Georgia, where one can go for fifteen years or more without knowing who their Representative is.

Adding to the problem is the fact that the House has moved up the vote from Friday to Thursday. In doing so, the House may have put the kibosh on the attempts to influence this from the outside. Hundreds of Vermonters, the majority of whom support marriage equality, have gathered in Montpelier to watch and rally. Many of them are currently in the House chamber to watch and be visible.

Many are unsure if the House will pass the bill with more than one hundred votes. It will take one hundred votes in the hundred and fifty member House to override the promised veto by Governor Douglas. If it meets the threshold, Governor Douglas may go ahead and sign it rather than waste the time it will take for the bill to return to the House and Senate for the override.

A scientific poll in January and an unscientific poll in March both show that Vermonters support marriage equality. The scientific poll shows that the support is at fifty-eight percent and the unscientific poll shows it at fifty-five percent. What is perhaps interesting is that the two polls largely mirror each other in terms of their numbers. The Doyle Poll, which measures respondents rather than a random sampling, favors the rural areas of the state where the towns are still small enough for actual town hall meetings on Town Hall Meeting Day. In the few cities such as Rutland, Burlington, Bennington, Montpelier-Barre, and Brattleboro, to name a few, the population is large enough that there is no way to hold an actual town hall meeting. The forms for the Doyle Poll are not normally available to the cities, and thus the poll tends to favor the rural small towns such as Ira, Pittsford, Plainsfield, and the like. Even given this, the support for same-sex marriage is strong enough that the majority of those who responded to the Doyle Poll say that they are in favor.

The robo-calls may backfire badly, actually. Vermonters, barring a few who are feeling desperate about this issue, do not want outside influence. In fact, when Governor Douglas decided to announce his intention to veto the legislation, the worst thing that people said about him was that he was bowing to the national Republican Party and the Conservative pundits such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Vermonters feel very protective of their state. Representative Peter Welsh has earned the ire of many in Vermont by appearing to be too interested in the national political apparatus and not in the will of those who voted him into office. If Welsh or Douglas were to face strong opposition in 2010, they may well loose their seats. On the other hand, that thorn in the side of the Bush Administration, Senator Patrick Leahy, has retained his seat for thirty-six years by ever being conscious of what the people of Vermont intend for him to do. Even seemingly strong opposition from the Republican Party has failed to topple him or Senator Bernie Sanders.

That said, Vermonters believe that only Vermonters should determine the fate of Vermont. It all comes down to the all but immortal Vermont politician Fred Tuttle, the man who took down an outsider with the least expensive campaign in Vermont history. Or so the story goes.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20090402/THISJUSTIN/904020293

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20090402/NEWS/904020289

Bridget “Sei” McBride is a trans-lesbian who lives in Vermont and has a strong passion for LGBTI rights. She has a BA in History and her hobbies include sci-fi, anime, fantasy, action movies, video games, and more. Currently, she is working on her MA in Individualized Studies at Goddard College. Her specialization is in cultural history and cultural comparison.