Features
Community Profile:
Rep. Margaret Hummel
Community Profile
Applied Faith
by Nat Michael
Margaret Hummel represents Underhill, Jericho, and Bolton in the Vermont legislature, first elected in 1996. She has lived in Underhill for 20 years, and also serves on the Selectboard. She’s been married to her husband Manfred for 37 years, and has 4 grown children and one granddaughter. She has a master’s in history and one in theology. She first entered politics in 1988 with the Solid Waste Commission – a fact imparted with a bit of a smile.
In an email response to questions posed after our interview, she wrote, “I am not planning on running for statewide office. I would like to be a legislative leader, but am not, except in the quietest of ways. I do participate actively in floor debates, and have a reputation for being well prepared and speaking clearly. I’m not an instinctive politician, and it took me a long time to figure out how the system really works. Since the House went Republican, I have been marginalized, probably because of my outspokenness and failure to recognize that there are some people it is better not to cross or offend.”
One of the apparent results: “This past year I was assigned to the Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources committee, which, although it does important work, is not a place where I can use my background or knowledge.”
In the election year of 2000 she would play a role in passing Vermont’s historic civil unions legislation.
That decision has clearly made a major mark in her life, and it dominated our conversation. Watching her in the legislature and at town meeting three years ago made me realize we had a real hero standing up for us. She has a presence, a stature, that imparts a strong impression of wisdom and fairness based on an application of her faith.
Margaret’s Uncle Douglas, she said, was born in 1915, her father’s brother and the youngest of six. She eventually realized he was gay. As a child, Margaret remembers him always attending family functions, picnics, etc., with Mel, “and Mel was never left out.”
Thinking back, she distinctly remembers “being puzzled that Uncle Doug was always with another man while all the other couples were both men and women. And the others had kids.” But of course none of this was ever discussed – you didn’t talk about such things then. But it was always Doug and Mel, “and Mel was never left out.”
It was this relationship with the two men, her strong religious convictions, and her abiding sense of fairness that Hummel would return to during the long months debating civil unions. During those legislative discussions, it was her uncle she took the floor to speak about. Uncle Doug had been in a Baltimore hospital, on life support, dying. “And the doctor had said to Mel, his partner of 40 years, ‘I cannot allow you to make this decision. You are not related.’ And my aunt in Florida had to be called, Aunt Alice.” And while Aunt Alice agreed with Mel’s decision to let Doug die peacefully, “it struck me as wrong! I had seen them together since I was a little kid!”
One of the inevitable discussions at the statehouse was whether sexual orientation was a choice or something we’re born with. Hummel said Uncle Doug “colored my reaction. Would Doug, born in 1915, have chosen to be a homosexual in that more oppressive time? It clarified my thinking.”
As the statewide, then nationwide, debate heated up, Margaret began dealing with public reaction. She hauled out of a file an enormous stack of papers to show me: legal briefs, anti-civil union mass mailings, notes. “I never have before – nor since – seen so much paperwork. This goes very deep. It’s about religion, how society is organized – a certain gender equity. And the debate should be deep. But the part that disturbed me was the hatred. I was shocked over the hatred and condemnation. I received hate mail in letters, calls, emails, and faxes. I was told I was going to hell if I voted for this [measure]. I heard from 300 people just in my district! It was split 50/50 how people felt about this.”
When I asked if she had any fears for personal safety she said, “At one point, I did think about the possibility of someone in the balcony [of the State House] with a gun. But I really never worried about my personal safety.” During this time it was reported in the newspapers that some of the other members of the legislature were being threatened while driving their cars with the House license plates; some of them even turned in their plates, preferring not to be so easily identified. At the time, Margaret Hummel was in my driveway on a matter unrelated to civil unions, and I asked if she worried about being harassed. “Just let them try!” was her answer as she got in her car with the House plates and drove off.
In her final decision on how to vote, all of Margaret Hummel’s background came into play. “It’s social justice,” she said. “I look through the lens of justice regarding all my decisions, CU, healthcare, schools.” Her religious beliefs were certainly called into question by those who disagreed. She lost a friend over her stand on CU, she said, because she felt their shared religion (Roman Catholicism) did not provide “a telling argument” against passing the bill.
“And I did look at this as a religious person. One of the reasons I voted for this is I am a religious person. The Bible said slavery is ok. The Bible says homosexuality is wrong. And I know some members [of the legislature] were being preached at from the pulpit when they went to church. But it is far more important to have equality before God, and to practice the virtue of compassion and listen to people’s stories. Our [gay] brothers and [lesbian] sisters are bearing terrible burdens. And a religious person, it seemed to me, would vote for [civil unions] instead of against.”
Asked why she voted for CU instead of full marriage, Hummel answered, “It was a practical compromise. Many people were not ready for any step. It [CU] would be more acceptable, politics being ‘the art of the possible.’ People have been able to live quite happily with civil union even though they thought they couldn’t. What was most important, whatever the mechanism, was the best way to achieve the rights and responsibilities. And at that point it was civil union because it was possible. Having a place, a niche is very important.”
Along with the notes and thank yous (“I felt very good about that.”), there were other surprises, “good surprises,” Hummel said: “The skeptics who changed their minds at great personal cost after listening to people’s stories – who knew people in their districts were not in favor, but voted for because they knew it was right. And lost their seats. They were heroes in many ways.”
Even now, three years later, her eyes filled with tears as she recounted what openly gay Representative Bill Lippert had to endure and his moving speech on the floor. She was equally moved by the member from Rutland who rose to speak of her two lesbian daughters publicly for the first time.
And when I asked if she were thinking of Uncle Doug when she voted, she said, “I was doing it for him and all the other people similarly situated.” Leaning forward she continued, “Voting is a very solemn occasion. Applauding is not allowed during a vote. There were people packed in, in the balcony, on the stairs. There was a hush. And the vote was counted, and we knew we had it because the Senate would pass it. And a cheer started in the hall,” she slowly waved her arm, indicating the vast irrepressible energy moving in a wave, “and came all the way up, and got louder, and the speaker slammed his gavel,” bringing her fist down, “and it broke!” She sat as she finished, “Seldom has there been such clarity, a rightness of decision, so clear. Such a moment, such a moment.”
Nat Michael lives in Underhill.