July 1, 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of civil unions in Vermont. This legal alternative to marriage was the first of its kind in the United States. In the Vermont Supreme Court case , the court ruled that the state had no legal basis to discriminate against same-sex couples. If the Legislature would not allow same-sex couples to get marriage licenses, lawmakers would have to figure out a legal alternative. The result: civil unions.
开云体育's Andrea Laurion spoke with LGBTQ+ Vermonters who were coming of age 鈥� and coming out 鈥� when civil unions became legal. They were likely too young at the time to be thinking about marriage for themselves, but old enough to know what was going on and how it might affect them one day.
Note: This story was produced for the ear. We recommend listening, if you are able.
Andrea Laurion: It鈥檚 the first day of Essex Pride at Maple Park and the rain just won鈥檛 quit. Another rainy Saturday in Vermont, who woulda thought?
Despite the showers, spirits are still high inside the art market. And of course, because it鈥檚 Vermont, I immediately see people I know.
Andrea Laurion: How鈥檚 it going so far?
Ari Spatola: Good, Amy has sold a good amount of prints. We鈥檝e been doing Sharpie tattoos and those have been popular and great for engagement.
Andrea Laurion: Do you want to give me one?
Ari Spatola: Sure!
Andrea Laurion: At the other end of the park, drag performer and host Katniss Everqueer is keeping the crowd engaged in the Performance Pavilion. You could even say people were having a gay ol鈥� time.
Katniss Everqueer: OK, I鈥檓 going to make a few quick announcements, reminders, and then we have our final act of the day. Not one, not two, not three, not four, but five people coming to the stage! But first I want to thank our sponsors鈥�
Reflecting on the passage of civil unions 25 years ago
Andrea Laurion: Joyful Pride events like these are pretty commonplace in Vermont. The state consistently ranks as one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly states in the country. Last year, Vermont was the only state without on its legislative docket.
Vermont鈥檚 place in history was cemented 25 years ago when this little green state became the first to legally recognize same-sex relationships. The Vermont Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Vermont that the state had to allow same-sex marriage or a legal alternative. The landmark civil unions law that followed was the first step in the marriage equality that exists for LGBTQ+ couples today.
Here鈥檚 Gov. Howard Dean, at a press conference after signing the civil unions bill in April of 2000:
Gov. Howard Dean: I choose to sign this bill because I fundamentally believe that it's the right thing to do, and I fundamentally believe it's the right thing to do for the state of Vermont and the United States of America. I believe that, because until every human being is treated with dignity because they are a human being, and not because they belong in some category, then every American and every Vermonter is poorer because of that.
Andrea Laurion: Compared to many other parts of the country, Vermont is a safe space for LGBTQ+ people. But reality is often a bit more complicated.
Andrea Laurion: Rain, OK, you are my friend. And one of the first people I met here.
Rain Nissen-Reilly: I love that.
Andrea Laurion: It was through my friendship with Rain that I first got an idea of what it was like to grow up as a queer kid in Vermont during the turn of the millennium. Rain went to elementary school in Middlebury then middle and high school in Montpelier.
Rain Nissen-Reilly: When I was a teenager, like almost no one in high school was out. It was the early and mid-2000s, so it was when the word gay was like the pejorative du jour, you know, everything that you didn't like was gay. You know, a conflicting, weird time to be a queer youth, I would say. Not the worst place, but, you know, not the best either.
Andrea Laurion: Yeah, and I'd never heard of this before I met you, but you told me about Take Back Vermont.
Rain Nissen-Reilly: From my understanding, Take Back Vermont was a reactionary response to, or it felt at the time like a reactionary response to civil unions and gay rights. I think there were certain segments of the state that felt there were certain population segments of the state that really felt like things were getting too progressive too fast, and it made them, I think, mad and scared. And so around the time that civil unions got passed, these big black and white signs started popping up all over the state, like white backgrounds, big black block letters that just said, Take Back Vermont. It was sad and it sucked.
Andrea Laurion: Rain was in middle school when civil unions passed.
Rain Nissen-Reilly: I just remember the Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier was full of people, and they were having open testimony for people to give their opinions. All sorts of people were going up and giving their opinions for or against.
Speaker 1: It concerns me that without traditional marriage intact, the children of our state will be victims of confusion and a lack of a strong standard.
Speaker 2: The question is not only should they be allowed to marry, but are gay and lesbian Vermonters worthy of respect and acceptance.
Speaker 3: For centuries, marriage between a man and a woman has been the glue that has held societies together.
Speaker 4: As a woman living in a committed, loving relationship with another woman with whom I鈥檓 raising her two sons, I live a secretive life out of fear.
Speaker 5: And would ask that this body of lawmakers not bend to political pressure to legitimize this behavior by calling it marriage.
Rain Nissen-Reilly: I have this one memory that I really loved. I grew up in a liberal religious tradition. This young Unitarian Universalist minister got up to testify, and she said something along the lines of, 鈥淗i, you folks have heard a lot of religious arguments against civil unions. And there is this perception that, like, the only way to be religious is to be anti-gay. I am a minister, I am a religious official, and I want to tell you about religious arguments for civil unions.鈥�
I still remember being in that room and looking down and hearing her talk, and how incredible of an experience it was for me to like to hear that minister talk in support of queer people. And then for it to work and for civil unions to be passed, and how much it felt like Vermont was doing the right thing.
Andrea Laurion: Hearing Rain鈥檚 story made me curious about the experiences of other young LGBTQ+ Vermonters during this time. What was it like to grow up and figure out your sexuality while your typically quiet state is in the national spotlight? And what if the topic of discussion relates to the very thing you鈥檙e trying to understand about yourself?
Rain Nissen-Reilly: All the people my age who were queer must have had a really interesting time with it. All the different layers of like, what your family thinks, what your town thinks, what your country thinks, you know, the perception of what all the different layers of society might think of you while trying to kind of weigh the balance of, is it safe? Is this important enough to me to risk getting hurt by coming out? That is a really psychologically heavy burden, I think, for an adolescent to bear, to be in the long, hard figuring out process of who they are on the inside.
Andrea Laurion: Where are those Vermonters now? How did this time affect them? I wanted to find out and hear some of their stories.
'As a kid, you don't fully have the picture of what the political landscape is like'
Andrea Laurion: Justin Marsh grew up in Cambridge.
Justin Marsh: Just a multi-generation Vermonter, farm family, lived on a road where it was my family, my aunt and uncle and my grandparents, and the barn was in the middle and sugaring operation as well. So real rural roots.
Andrea Laurion: They first came out as bi at age 15 to their friends, before coming out to their parents at 16.
Justin Marsh: And then I kind of stopped coming out. I just sort of lived my life authentically, and people put the pieces together from there.
Andrea Laurion: You might also know Justin as the drag performer Emoji Nightmare. Emoji performs all over Vermont, hosting bingos and brunches. Emoji Nightmare also reads children's books as part of Drag Story Hour.
at their alma mater, VTSU-Johnson, in April of this year:
Emoji Nightmare: We did a makeup tutorial where I basically packed everything I did my face with and brought it with me and put it on Alex, so step-by-step exactly what I did for my face on them鈥�
Andrea Laurion: But long before that, Justin was a kid in Lamoille County, a 10-year-old at the time that civil unions were being debated in Montpelier.
Justin Marsh: It鈥檚 complicated. As a kid, you don't fully have the picture of what the political landscape is like. And especially then in Vermont, where I mean, I didn't have internet until I was in college, so, like, or maybe even after that. So, I couldn't just fire up the computer and, you know, do this research on my own.
I actually learned the term gay from Marselis Parsons on WCAX news. I have a memory that's burned into my mind. [laughs] The news was on, and they were talking about gay marriage and civil unions, and I didn't know what what constituted a gay marriage, so I asked my parents, and I don't necessarily remember their exact words, but I just remember that it was not seen like my perception of what gay was was not a good thing necessarily.
Andrea Laurion: In high school, Justin rocked eyeliner, loved pop music and cruised around the University Mall with a group of older girls from church. But despite being a performer now, teenage Justin wouldn鈥檛 even help with the stage crew.
Justin Marsh: I didn't want anything to do with performing arts in high school, because that was just a target, really, for anyone to either tell me that, you're gay!, or just one more thing to give someone. So I avoided that like the plague, and just kept a low profile.
Andrea Laurion: Many queer people find they need to leave where they're from to find community, and you've found community and still able to maintain that.
Justin Marsh: It was never a consideration for me to leave Vermont. And people were surprised by it.
Andrea Laurion: In fact, Justin鈥檚 first exploration with drag and gender identity didn鈥檛 happen in Burlington, but in their hometown of Cambridge. After working at Smugglers' Notch, Justin would go out with some friends to a nearby dive bar.
Justin Marsh: I'd throw on some outfits and makeup and do my hair real weird. I remember my mom being like, what are you doing, doing that here? Like, do that in Burlington.
Andrea Laurion: Justin celebrated 10 years of Emoji Nightmare this past spring. I asked what they would say to teenage Justin now.
Justin Marsh: What I would tell myself then is that you're gonna do a lot of things that you don't think you're ever gonna do. I鈥檝e embraced so many parts of my identity, I鈥檝e embraced so many parts of my artistic abilities. They'll find their potential partner there. They're gonna feel love and connection. And like, those things may not be important to you right now at 15 or 16, but like, they're gonna really feel important to you then, and those are the reasons why.
'I wish that level of visibility was available when I was that age'
Andrea Laurion: Justin found community and support in their hometown, but not everyone does. Lots of LGBTQ+ people choose to leave where they鈥檙e from, often searching for acceptance elsewhere.
One of those Vermonters who moved away is Jesse Proia. Jesse is an LGBTQ+ specialized psychotherapist and queer writer living in Denver, Colorado. He鈥檚 from St. Johnsbury and described his younger self as a 鈥淣ortheast Kingdom kid.鈥�
Jesse Proia: I knew I was different from a very young age, so I kind of always had a chip on my shoulder, and kind of moved through adolescence that way.
Andrea Laurion: What does a Northeast Kingdom kid mean?
Jesse Proia: Well, it's funny because I often say like, we're ag kids, agricultural kids, but we're all so agro kids. [laughs] We take a lot of pride in being from the most rural part of the state, and have a lot of pride being of the Northeast Kingdom.
Andrea Laurion: Growing up, Jesse spent a lot of time painting, drawing, and taking pictures around the NEK. As a young teen becoming aware of his queerness, Jesse recalled that period around civil unions as a very traumatic time.
Jesse Proia: Being aware of what Take Back Vermont meant, and then seeing those billboards all over the state was really, I mean, even just talking about now I get emotional. It was like everyone in the Northeast Kingdom and everyone across the state was saying, not you, we don't like you. You're not welcome here. And it's wild to think that, like, there's anything take Vermont back. I'm a multi-generational Vermonter and that the issue of queerness was just completely erased within, like, something that could be preexisting within the state.
Andrea Laurion: Jesse鈥檚 love of art would eventually take him to Brooklyn and London. He found healing and community with artists and comes back to visit Vermont often. Jesse finds comfort in the smaller Pride events taking place across the state.
Jesse Proia: I wish that level of visibility was available when I was that age. I remember last summer Newport Pride, that was represented with so many queer farmers and agricultural folks. I thought it was so gorgeous to see that and to see it not fitting into again, like that perfect frame of what Pride should be like or what awareness should be like and have it be community reflective. To me, that's Vermont.
'This thing was truly momentous'
Andrea Laurion: This June alone, there were , from Essex to Newport to Bennington to Rutland. That鈥檚 in addition to Pride events that are held in other months, such as Hartland Pride in May or the large Burlington Pride in September.
There鈥檚 also year-round events such as or or queer karaoke, otherwise known as .
organizes twice-yearly events in Barre where queer artists and crafters can sell their work. The events include activities that don鈥檛 require money, to bring the community together. One of the organizers, Dana Dwinnell-Yardley, also grew up in the NEK. As a kid, Dana was homeschooled on a 45-acre homestead in Irasburg.
Dana Dwinnell-Yardley: Think tie dye T-shirts and T-shirts that say peace and T-shirts that have a million holes in them from running around in the woods.
Andrea Laurion: Thanks to homeschooling, Dana said she was insulated from some of the political backlash that was happening in the Northeast Kingdom at the time. She grew up with a lot of queer people in her life and her parents were openly bisexual.
Dana Dwinnell-Yardley: Being queer was always an option in my family, which is just such a gift. They're like however you end up being, whoever you end up liking, it's gonna be great. We're gonna love you. So it was this very open-ended way of being in my family.
Andrea Laurion: Dana鈥檚 mom was a Unitarian Universalist minister and their church was involved in interfaith days of action at the Statehouse around civil unions.
Dana Dwinnell-Yardley: We had a bunch of queer couples in our church, and this was a big deal, like a really big personal deal for people. So our church did a bunch of organizing around this, and made the trek down to Montpelier, and it is a trek from the Kingdom, was like an hour and a half.
Andrea Laurion: Dana spent a lot of time in the Statehouse that winter, a great civics lesson for a homeschooler.
Dana Dwinnell-Yardley: I was getting a crash course in, how does the branches of government work? How does decision-making work on a political scale, understanding the difference between the Supreme Court and then the Legislature and then the governor was going to have to sign it.
I fell in love with the architecture of the building, and also just the process that was going on in there and that we got to be part of, that we could just walk into the Statehouse. Like, how cool was that?
Andrea Laurion: Looking back now, Dana said participating in getting civil unions passed was her first piece of political organizing, a big part of her life today.
Dana Dwinnell-Yardley: Largely, one of the reasons that that bill got passed is that people came out, because people are afraid of things they don't know. And so there was this huge movement to be like, Hello, I am your neighbor. I am also gay. I don't know if you knew that, but you know me. You helped me pull my car out of the ditch. We garden together, whatever it is. I think the fear is just so much based on what we don't know, and on queer folks being invisible and not being part of the narrative and not being part of what people see publicly.
Andrea Laurion: The civil unions law went into effect on July 1, 2000. Dana got to tag along as her mom performed civil union ceremonies at their church in Derby Line. The church had received hate mail for its activism work but ultimately, the ceremonies that first weekend in July went on just fine. Thirteen-year-old Dana couldn鈥檛 believe there were members of the press sitting in the balcony of her church.
Dana Dwinnell-Yardley: There was international press from Canada there, and like, this is my little dinky church with 35 members that I, like, go to Sunday School at. When you're 13, like, everything is changing, and everything feels a little momentous when you have all the hormones that are like, this is momentous, but like, this thing was truly momentous. So, yeah, just getting to be alive in that time, at that particular time in my life, was a cool confluence.
'Can you do public service and be gay?'
Andrea Laurion: The state house also played a big role for Vermont鈥檚 treasurer, Mike Pieciak.
Mike Pieciak: 1998, I was a page up in Montpelier in the Legislature.
Andrea Laurion: Every session, eighth grade students from all around Vermont apply to be a legislative page. Pages deliver messages, assist the sergeant-at-arms, and get a front row seat to legislative action in the Vermont House and Senate. They do it all while wearing a signature green blazer. The civil unions case wasn鈥檛 a legislative item that session, but it was a topic of conversation.
Mike Pieciak: I just remember feeling like that issue was very on the surface, and people were talking about it and thinking about it, civil unions, that is, and marriage equality.
Andrea Laurion: Describe teenage Mike for me. Put teenage Mike in that chair right there. What鈥檚 he wearing? What鈥檚 he look like? What鈥檚 he into?
Mike Pieciak: Alright, well, teenage Mike, probably, probably the only difference is I'd have a buzz cut. [laughs] That was a common hairstyle for me.
Andrea Laurion: Were you a punk? Is that why you had a shaved head?
Mike Pieciak: [laughs] No, I played football, actually.
Andrea Laurion: The beginning of his teenage years were very different compared to the end.
Mike Pieciak: Thirteen or fourteen, I was pretty shy and pretty quiet, tried not to be the center of anything. And by the time I became 18, sort of through the teenage years, I was much more outgoing and personable, more connections and friendships and things like that.
Andrea Laurion: Treasurer Pieciak 鈥� Mike 鈥� lives in Winooski now, but grew up in Brattleboro. His transition from shy to outgoing started after attending a nearby boarding school in Massachusetts.
Mike Pieciak: It was really transformative in many ways. I was expecting it to be a good academic experience, but it ended up being much more about personal growth.
Andrea Laurion: Mike will never know what his high school experience would have been if he had attended a different school, but he thinks going somewhere new was part of what got him out of his shell.
Mike Pieciak: I do think it had something to do with being out of this place that I had grown up and loved and was comfortable and knew everybody. People knew how to pronounce my last name in Brattleboro. They didn't know how to pronounce my last name at the new school. That was always a marker for me of whether I was someplace that I considered home [laughs] and and it forced me to grow up.
Andrea Laurion: Mike鈥檚 family is very active in the Brattleboro community, and from a young age, he wanted to be involved in public service, too. Despite his shyness, Mike was president of his sixth, seventh, and eighth grade classes. Yet, Mike still had some questions about his future.
Mike Pieciak: You know, wrestling with this idea that, can you do public service and be gay? Can you do public service and be accepted? Can you be successful at it?
Andrea Laurion: Young Mike saw possibility in former state Rep. Bill Lippert, the only openly gay elected state official at that time.
Mike Pieciak: You know, as a 13, 14-year-old me being in Montpelier and seeing this person who was very openly out and proud and gay and had no qualms about it and no reservations about it. He struck me as somebody that was much more dynamic and forceful than a lot of the other legislators that were there. And so it wasn't just that he was, you know, the only openly gay legislator. It was that he was, I thought he was so effective and such an eloquent speaker, and so passionate and so thoughtful, and that left an impact on me.
'We were able to offer something we had not received when we were young.'
Andrea Laurion: Mike is not the only one who has been touched by Bill鈥檚 words. On March 15, 2000, as the House debated the civil unions measure, Bill Lippert stood up and gave an impassioned speech. It鈥檚 widely credited as a turning point in the debate over civil unions.
[ARCHIVE TAPE] Passing the bill the House Judiciary Committee has brought forward will not end discrimination. It will not end prejudice, it will not end hate. But it will grant rights. You may argue about whether they鈥檙e civil rights or other rights. But I can tell you this, they鈥檙e rights I don鈥檛 have right now 鈥� and most everyone else in this chamber does.
Bill Lippert: Yes, I was nervous, but it was a privilege that I got to stand up and speak the truth about who we are as gay and lesbian people.
Andrea Laurion: This is Bill Lippert. We spoke a few weeks ago.
Bill Lippert: Because during the time of civil unions, the prejudice, the vitriol, the hatefulness that was being brought forward by people who clearly did not know gay and lesbian people. I got the opportunity to say, no, let me put a face on this. Let me tell you what's true about who we are, and that was, for me, a blessing.
Andrea Laurion: Bill grew up the son of a minister in rural Pennsylvania. In the summer of 1967, the summer of love, teenage Bill attended a national church conference in Berkeley, California, and it was eye-opening.
Bill Lippert: It was the first time I'd seen two men dancing together. It stirred all my inner struggles massively. In 1967, I was 17 years old, and I was struggling. There is no pretense about it, and that's part of why I identify so strongly and have over my adult lifetime with young people, young, LGBTQ, queer youth.
Andrea Laurion: What was harder for you, that time in your life as a teenager where you were struggling and you were trying to know yourself, or when you were the only out gay legislator in Vermont?
Bill Lippert: It was much harder to be thinking that I might be the only gay person anywhere in my world. There were different challenges being the only openly gay member of the Vermont Legislature, but by that point in my life, I had the good fortune to have built a solid network of support. And so while there were all kinds of vicious attacks, it was much worse to be isolated as a teen with no visible role models.
Andrea Laurion: After moving to Vermont, Bill worked in mental health and he said he was painfully aware of the struggles of gay and lesbian teenagers. So, in 1989, Bill was part of the group that started Outright Vermont to support and empower LGTBQ+ youth across the state. The organization has really grown over the decades. Last year, Outright purchased more than 140 acres of lakefront property as a permanent home for their residential summer camp, Camp Outright. For several summers, Bill was a volunteer at Camp Outright and two moments of connection with young people have stayed with him.
Bill Lippert: Well, you might not know by listening, but I'm 75 and when I was volunteering, I was probably my late 60s, early 70s. Most of the staff at Camp Outright are in their 20s or 30s, so I stood out.
I can remember two different occasions that come to mind as to what it means to be a role model. As we were standing in the lunch line one day, this young person turned to me and they said, Would you be my gay grandpa? And I was like, I was like, I was touched.
Andrea Laurion: Later on, Bill attended the camp talent show with his husband, Enrique.
Bill Lippert: During a break, we were standing talking to each other, and there was this young person kind of nearby and it was very clear they wanted to say hello. So I finally invited them in. They basically said to us, I just want to tell you how hopeful it is to see an old gay couple.
Now, as soon as the words left their mouth, they were embarrassed, but we immediately laughed and said, 鈥淲e are, in fact, an old gay couple.鈥� But what was so touching was that there was something hopeful for them and that they wanted to articulate this, that it mattered to them.
Andrea Laurion: Bill, who longed for a role model, ended up becoming that for others.
Bill Lippert: We were able to offer something there that we had not received when we were the young teen boys, me in central Pennsylvania, and my spouse, who grew up in Guam.
Andrea Laurion: And maybe someday those young people will be that hope for someone else.
Andrea Laurion: Back at that soggy Saturday in Essex, the crowd at Essex Pride is having a good time, despite the showers.
Katniss Everqueer: Let's create something. This is absolutely something that has come out of love, has come out of community, has literally come out of the neighborhoods of Essex Junction鈥�
Andrea Laurion: As a kid, getting married can feel so far away. And only in the last decade did marriage become a right that people who aren鈥檛 straight could even consider. It鈥檚 hard to dream of wearing a white wedding dress when you鈥檇 rather put on a crisp suit, or vice versa.
Young people at the turn of the millennium learned that they could love whoever they wanted, and make that love official in the eyes of the law. And that's thanks to Vermont, our brave little state.
Katniss Everqueer: I love you all. I have been Katniss Everqueer. It has been a joy to host you today. Happy Pride Month! Let's live June ferociously, fiercely, weirdly and queerly. Let's live year round that way. We are here for you. We see you, we love you. Thank you, everyone!
This story was reported and produced by Andrea Laurion. It was edited by Mikaela Lefrak and Jon Ehrens, who also did the mixing and provided music. Additional support from Daniela Fierro and Kallie Kunukkasseril.
Special thanks to Liam Elder-Connors, Catherine Hurley, Bob Kinzel, Jane Lindholm, Noah Villamarin-Cutter, Karen Anderson, Betty Smith, Rain Nissen-Reilly, Kate Jerman, Llu Mulvaney-Stanak, Dana Kaplan, Jess Bouchard, Kris Smith Thyme, David Kunin and Ari Spatola.
