Arguments Just
Don’t Hold Up

This is in response to two letters in last week’s Herald.

Mr. Isham puts words in my mouth, that "the majority’s opinion doesn’t matter." He offers no argument against what I actually said, that constitutional rights trump the majority, which of course they do.

Despite his pointless sarcasm, Mr. Dybvig asks a rhetorical question that invites a substantive answer.

He acknowledges that the legislature is bound by the Vermont constitution as interpreted by the Vermont Supreme Court. He then asks if it ever occurred to me that the court might have erred, that opponents to civil unions might be right.

The answer is yes it occurred to me. Constantly. Like each of my colleagues I gave full consideration to each opposition argument.

Those arguments simply don’t hold up. Did the court over-reach? Judicial review is the court’s job. Did the Baker decision misread the constitution? The Baker decision said the common benefits clause prevents the state from providing legal benefits to one group and arbitrarily excluding others. Reasonable.

But is the exclusion of gays and lesbian couples from the legal benefits of civil marriage really arbitrary? What of traditional marriage, traditional condemnation of homosexuality, morality, health and safety, the economy, religion, public discomfort?

Each of these objections have logical problems on examination and none of them justifies denying equal protection of the law.

Civil unions will most likely be good for the economy, but even if there were expenses, that wouldn’t cancel the right to equal protection of the law.

Many people simply feel uncomfortable with so significant a departure from the familiar. Comfort with the familiar is not a constitutional right. Equal protection of the law is. You own your constitutional rights, you don’t need the majority’s permission to enjoy those rights.

Actually this has very little to do with most of us. It demands nothing of us, prohibits us nothing, changes nothing. It’s all about our gay and lesbian neighbors’ relationships to their government. Yes it’s their government.

Yes, it’s their government too.

Weighed against the principle of the common benefits clause, opponents’ logic could not support their conclusion.

Dick McCormack

Senator, Windsor Co.