CNN won't cover it all day, all the time, but Bob Kinsey, one of the real heroes of the Vermont Civil Union debate, died this past week.
Bob was, frankly, one hell of a guy, as the publisher of the local paper explains in an obit. A Republican, he lost the House seat he'd held for thirty years after supporting the civil union bill. He got knocked off by a conservative Republican in the primary. He wasn't a supporter of civil unions when the debate started, but as he listened to his conscience, his family, and his God, he came to be the bill's most prominent supporter in the corner of the state that opposed it the most strenuously.
He was, in part, the inspiration for the book Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage, a book I've recomended to more than a few on kos who have thought they knew what happened in Vermont. As David Moats, the Pulitzer Award winning writer who authored Civil Wars tells it:
[more after the fold]
Tom Little, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, managed the debate on the floor of the House, where members took up and defeated several amendments to the civil unions bill. But everyone was waiting for the moment when Bill Lippert would speak.
Lippert, vice chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was the only openly gay member of the Vermont Legislature. He had earned the respect of many House members over the years, but the House was facing furious opposition to civil unions. That Lippert had conducted himself with dignity and restraint during those tense weeks gave his words added weight when he finally rose to speak.
It was his purpose to put a human face on the question of civil unions and gay rights. "Who are we?" he asked. "We are committed, caring, loving individuals in a time when desire for greater commitment, greater love, greater fidelity is needed in our society, and I find it so ironic that rather than being embraced and welcomed we are seen as a threat." He mentioned the terrible toll of the AIDS epidemic. "Don't tell me about what a committed relationship is and isn't. I've watched my gay brothers care for each other deeply and my lesbian sisters nurse and care. There is no love and no commitment any greater than what I've seen, what I know."
Lippert made the case for equal rights, and for many House members it was persuasive. As an observer in the press gallery, I saw his speech as a moment of clarity and truth, a high point in a complicated and bitter struggle. What followed also caught my attention. As soon as Lippert sat down, another House member rose to his feet, a conservative Republican dairy farmer from the far northeast of the state. It was Bob Kinsey who had served in the House for 30 years.
"Mr. Speaker!" he said. "I just heard the greatest speech I've heard in 30 years. And that's why I'm glad to be a friend of the member from Hinesburg, and that's why I'm glad to be on his side."
For me this was a defining moment -- when the Republican dairy farmer, whose roots went deep in the Vermont soil, stood with the gay Democrat, who had come to Vermont 28 years before with beard and braided hair. I wanted to know how these two men came together at that historic moment.
My book, Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage, is in part an answer to that question.
Bob stood up and said this when our state capital was an absolute zoo. Randall Terry had moved here and was making it a habit of accosting members of the legislature when they were trying to get into their cars (especially female legislators, according to Moats, but probably not Bob, who might not have taken too kindly to it). The Archbishop of Vermont was holding nightly rallies on the statehouse steps.
Bob Kinsey was about as close to the Jeffersonian ideal of the self-governing yeoman farmer that I'll ever see. He spent his life wrestling heifers and writing state budgets, getting a degree in 1971 before it was common for adults to go back to college (especially dairy farming adults), and raising a bunch of kids. One of his sons farms the land around the cemetery he was just buried in, one lives in Africa and helps run Heifer International.
My favorite memory of Bob is from a public meeting a few years back. Some rightwinger got on his case about the hemp bill that would legalize the production of industrial hemp, a plant related to modern marijuana, but without the side effects. What example are we setting for the children, blah blah blah. Bob says: "You know, I wasn't going to support that bill, but the folks pushing it came to our committee meeting, and they brought a pan of brownies for us, and after I had a couple of those brownies, well, I felt so good, I just couldn't not support it. But boy, they sure did make me thirsty." That pretty much took the piss right outta her.
Anyway, if the Vermont Civil Union bill meant anything to you, then Bob Kinsey meant something to you.
