Antimarriage
Group Emerges in Vermont

A group of same-sex-marriage opponents launched a campaign Tuesday to counter a Vermont state panel's analysis on granting marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples.

The Vermont Marriage Advisory Council is promoting the benefits of heterosexual marriage, especially for children, spokesman Stephen Cable told the Associated Press.

The state-appointed Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection is bound to stay neutral in its hearings to determine whether gay and lesbian Vermonters have the right to marry. In contrast, the Marriage Advisory Council says its Web-based campaign will be "purely educational."'

"In the last seven years, since civil unions [began], what we've discovered is that there's a tremendous amount of new information about traditional man and woman marriage and the social goods that it provides," Cable told the AP. "Marriage is so important an institution to society that any slight change in the law concerning marriage can have a profound impact on the social goods that it provide."

Cable said the group was formed after one same-sex-marriage opponent was given a cold reception at an October 29 hearing. Thomas Little, the commission's chairman, said that at some point in the meeting, he had to remind members that they were not to debate with him but to simply listen.

The government-backed commission is currently traveling through the state to meet with residents to hear different arguments for and against same-sex marriage. The 11-member group is slated to report their findings to the legislature in April, though lawmakers are not expected to take it up this year, the AP reports.

Little said the commission's conclusion, however, won't be to endorse one side of the argument or another.

"It misunderstands the mission or the charge of the commission, which is not, in my view, to make an up-or-down, yes-or-no recommendation on same-sex marriage, but to tell in a report what we found in testimony around the state and in our legal research, to let legislators and other elected officials use that data to make their decisions about the ultimate question," Little told the AP. (The Advocate)