Editing Baker v. Vermont (section)

==Background==
Following their initial [[Baehr v. Miike#Trial|success in Hawaii]] in 1996 that was later undone by a popular referendum in 1998, advocates for same-sex marriage selected Vermont for their lawsuit on the basis of the state's record of establishing rights for [[Homosexual male|gays]] and [[lesbian]]s as well as the difficulty of [[Constitution of Vermont#Amending the constitution|amending its constitution]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Moats |first=David|title=Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage|url=https://archive.org/details/civilwarsbattlef00moat |url-access=registration |year=2004 |publisher=Harcourt Books|pages=[https://archive.org/details/civilwarsbattlef00moat/page/104 104–5]|isbn=9780151010172}}</ref>

Vermont enacted hate crimes legislation in 1990, one of the first states to do so. From the time the legislation that became the Hate Crimes Act was introduced in 1989, it included sexual orientation. Most of the testimony and statistics that supported the legislation related to the gay and lesbian community and one incident of anti-gay violence helped secure its passage.<ref>{{cite book|last=Moats |first=David|title=Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage|url=https://archive.org/details/civilwarsbattlef00moat |url-access=registration |year=2004|publisher=Harcourt Books|pages=[https://archive.org/details/civilwarsbattlef00moat/page/66 66–70]|isbn=9780151010172}}</ref><ref>Mary Bernsten, "The Contradictions of Gay Ethnicity: Forging Identity in Vermont," in David S. Meyer, et al., eds, ''Social Movements: Identity, Culture, and the State'' (Oxford University Press, 2002), 96-7, [https://books.google.com/books?id=p8XCvN9UaoAC&pg=PA96& available online], accessed July 12, 2013</ref> It added ''[[sexual orientation]]'' to its [[Anti-discrimination law|anti-discrimination statute]], the Human Rights Law, in 1992.<ref>{{cite book|last=Moats |first=David|title=Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage|url=https://archive.org/details/civilwarsbattlef00moat |url-access=registration |year=2004|publisher=Harcourt Books|pages=[https://archive.org/details/civilwarsbattlef00moat/page/71 71–5]|isbn=9780151010172}}</ref> In 1993, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the case ''In re B.L.V.B.'' that a woman could [[Adoption|adopt]] her lesbian partner's natural children. The statute provided that an adoption terminates the rights of natural parents, unless the person adopting is the ''[[spouse]]'' of the child's natural parent. The Court decided that the statute did not intend to restrict adoption to legal spouses only, that safeguarding the child was its "general intent and spirit", and that adoption by a second woman was therefore permissible.<ref>{{cite news|last=Wong|first=Doris Sue|title=Vt. court rules woman may adopt children of her lesbian partner|url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8232802.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140610060642/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8232802.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=June 10, 2014|access-date=August 8, 2013|newspaper=Boston Globe|date=June 19, 1993}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Moats |first=David|title=Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage|url=https://archive.org/details/civilwarsbattlef00moat |url-access=registration |year=2004|publisher=Harcourt Books|pages=[https://archive.org/details/civilwarsbattlef00moat/page/96 96–7]|isbn=9780151010172}}</ref> In 1995, in the course of reforming the state's adoption statute, a Senate committee first removed language allowing unmarried couples, whatever their sex, to adopt, but after months of work the legislature passed a version that made same-sex couples eligible to adopt.<ref>{{cite book|last=Moats |first=David|title=Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage|url=https://archive.org/details/civilwarsbattlef00moat |url-access=registration |year=2004|publisher=Harcourt Books|pages=[https://archive.org/details/civilwarsbattlef00moat/page/97 97–9]|isbn=9780151010172}}</ref>