And despite a snowstorm, more than 1,500 people crammed inside Vermont’s State House last night to offer their opinions on whether gay marriages should be recognized in a state that has grabbed the spotlight on the issue. My brother David Goodman was there.

David Goodman: Vermonters braved a major snowstorm last night to fill the State House in Montpelier for the first major public hearing on a proposal to legalize same-sex marriage in Vermont. The public hearing followed by one month a decision by the Vermont Supreme Court which ruled that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to all the legal protections and benefits that heterosexuals enjoy in marriage. They then ordered the state legislature to come up with a solution by rewriting the marriage laws.

This would make Vermont the first state in the nation if it does legalize marriage to have allowed gay couples to be legally recognized. There are presently two bills pending in the Vermont state legislature: one to legalize marriage and essentially put it on the same footing as heterosexual marriage, the other is to create a domestic partnership law which will provide gay couples with legal status but will not allow them to be married. Last night’s hearing, virtually all advocates of same-sex marriage rejected the domestic partnership as a form of “separate but equal” status, and they spoke in favor of legalizing marriage outright.

Many of the advocates of gay marriage recalled Vermont’s history, in which it was the first state in the nation to outlaw slavery. Indeed, the Supreme Court in Vermont has written that this is one of the most important legal decisions in its history. There was a conscious and palpable sense of history in the State House chamber, as one person after another, many of them gay couples themselves or gay people who had been living in the closet for many years, spoke of their frustration and pain at not being able to marry their partners.

Opponents, many of them from churches, a number of them read from the Bible to explain their opposition to gay marriage. There was a rally called by the Catholic Bishop of Vermont to go on concurrently with the hearings inside. It was to take place outside the State House. Because of the major snowstorm, the rally was cancelled. Instead, however, a number of clergy representing eighty-two clergy people came, wrote and appeared and spoke in favor of same-sex marriage. That included the Episcopal Bishop of Vermont and the Methodist Bishop, who have publicly disagreed and broken with the Catholic Bishop of the state.

One gay clergyman in particular spoke of his frustration at being able to perform civil marriages for his parishioners but being unable to marry his own partner of many years. There is another hearing scheduled for about a month from now. The date has not been set. And a decision by the legislature on whether to legalize same-sex marriage in Vermont is expected probably in April. This is David Goodman in Montpelier for Pacifica Radio.