As of August 1, the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force will have the services of a paid field director for the first time. VFMTF president Beth Robinson said in an interview that a grant from the Civil Marriage Collaborative of the Proteus Foundation allowed the group to hire Robyn Maguire. The group is also looking for office space, although the grant request for that was not funded.
      Maguire, who moved to Vermont in May for family reasons, most recently worked for the Freedom to Marry Coalition in Massachusetts as the director of field development and training. After the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s Goodrich decision mandating full access for same-sex couples to marriage, Maguire worked in close collaboration with another Vermont resident, Mass Equality's Marty Rouse.
      "It's exciting to come back to Vermont where this process all began," Maguire said in an interview in mid-July. "Civil Union puts Vermont ahead of the game, as it shows that the state clearly values recognizing same sex-couples and honoring their relationships."
Robinson said that Maguire will work three-quarters time to help move the marriage conversation in the state forward. "For awhile we've been in a holding pattern, playing defense on civil unions. We're not in a holding pattern any more."
       The Baker v. State lawyer added that she's less worried about a caustic backlash over moving from civil union to marriage. "More Vermonters support same sex marriage than ever before," Robinson explained, noting a November 2004 AP election-day poll that found 40 percent of Vermont voters said they supported marriage and 37 percent supported civil unions, with another 21 percent supporting no recognition for same-sex couples. In 2000, the year the first-in-the-nation civil union law took effect, polling showed an even split of 49 percent for civil unions, and 49 percent against.
      "Nationally we're not leading the pack," Robinson said. "To our immediate north, there's marriage [equality]. To our immediate south there's marriage. The sky isn't falling, and it's the same sky here." A reinvigorated campaign for marriage equality, she suggested, would be hard, but not as ugly as the "Take Back Vermont" and "Listen to the People" civil union backlash.
      "We hope to build enough of a base of support, of enough depth and breadth, to assure legislators that [passing] a marriage bill won't result in a backlash," Robinson said.
        The reinvigorated organization is working on a new DVD and has already printed a new brochure focusing on the differences between marriage and civil union. The group plans to have a volunteer-staffed booth at the Addison County Field Days, the Tunbridge and Champlain Valley fairs, and at the State Fair in Rutland.
       As the organization notes on its web site, "not all VFMTF supporters embrace the institution of marriage; some do, and some don't. The core values that unite VFMTF are the beliefs that gay and lesbian Vermonters should have the same legal choices as our heterosexual counterparts, and that laws which treat us and our relationships as second class denigrate all of us, regardless of our desire to marry."