By Adam Lisberg
Free Press Staff Writer
Burlington Free Press
Saturday, August 5, 2000
Take Back Vermont.
Thousands of the signs have cropped up across the state, a prominent
Rorschach test nailed to barn walls, propped against fence posts and strung
from porch railings.
Those three little words are wide open to interpretation.
To the central Vermont farmer who popularized the phrase and has turned a
profit on mass-producing the signs, "Take Back Vermont" warns of a restless
electorate.
To Terry Dorsett, "Take Back Vermont" means the civil-union law needs to be
repealed. "We're just being told, broaden your mind, broaden your mind," he
said. "Where does it stop?"
To Al Day, those three words mean civil unions were the latest in a long
line of liberal ideas handed down from Montpelier. "That was the straw that
broke the camel's back, the queer thing," he said. "It's a catalyst that
brought us all together."
To Beth Robinson, those three words don't necessarily mean anything about
civil unions. "It seems to be symbolic of something broader," she said.
"It's more of a generic discontent with the current government in
Montpelier."
Robinson, one of the attorneys who argued the Supreme Court case that led to
the creation of civil unions, said she assumed the signs referred to civil
unions when she first saw them cropping up. Then she heard from people who
had knocked on doors where they saw "Take Back Vermont" signs, and found it
wasn't so simple.
"There are people with those signs who don't oppose the civil-union law,"
Robinson reported. Civil unions, which allow gay and lesbian couples to form
legal bonds equivalent to marriage, took effect July 1 and are enormously
controversial.
Out of touch
Dorsett, pastor of the Washington Baptist Church in the Orange County town
of Washington, posted a "Take Back Vermont" sign on his porch to protest
civil unions.
Like others who have posted signs on their homes, Dorsett insisted he
doesn't mean anything derogatory or threatening toward gays and lesbians by
putting up the sign -- he just thinks the law is wrong.
"With the civil unions, it's crossed the line," he said. "There have always
been homosexuals. Always will be. And they've always been in relationships.
But this just seems like the government recognizing it."
At his motorcycle repair shop in Washington, Day said he posted his sign
because he thinks it's time Vermonters take back their government from
lawyers, legislators and bureaucrats -- many of them born outside the
state -- who have imposed a liberal agenda on Vermont for years.
"We've let our government go so long without rein that it's time to rein
them in," Day said. "Two or three years we've been waiting for health care
for elderly people, and they still don't have it for them. But in three
months, you've got a hoity-toity lawyer who passes a whole new law."
Over the weekend, someone sprayed black paint on several signs in and around
Washington, including Day's. Some signs were altered to say "Take Back Your
Hate"; Day's was covered with fading black squiggles.
"I left it up just like it is so people could see what kind of people you're
dealing with," he said. "I don't care much about the sign, but let them
touch my car ... ."
Man with a plan
So what does "Take Back Vermont" mean to the man who had the signs printed?
"It's not all civil unions. It's a lot of things," Dick Lambert said on a
gray afternoon at his Washington farm. "It's nobody listening. And if we had
been listened to, this wouldn't be happening."
Lambert was wrestling with a greasy set of gears and chains on his hay
wagon, trying to fix a bent shaft. He and another fellow -- he won't say
who -- decided to print the signs in April, using a phrase they'd been
hearing -- he can't remember where -- about the civil-union debate.
Lambert spent $4,600 on the first batch of 1,000 plastic signs and sold them
for $5 each until they were gone. Last week he picked up another batch of
1,000 signs and watched them sell even faster; by Monday he said he had only
75 left.
He became accustomed to having strangers drive up to his farm and ask to buy
50 or 100 at a time, so they could drive back to their corners of the state
and sell them to their friends.
"They hear from somebody, you know, and they come out here," Lambert said.
"They're going like crazy. Everybody wants to get them."
The people who buy the signs are angry about a lot of things, he said --
civil unions, of course, but also Act 60 (the school funding and property
tax reform law) and Act 250 (the environmental permit law) and Act 200 (the
land-use planning law) and Act 15 (the anti-clear-cutting law) and a long
list of others.
Yet for all the anger that Lambert and the people who display his signs feel
toward those laws, they also express a sense of puzzlement about how those
laws came to be on the books. They scratch their heads and wonder because,
they say, they just can't understand why the politicians in Montpelier are
pushing all these crazy ideas on people who clearly don't want them.
"They just want us to pay our taxes and keep our mouth shut," Lambert said
finally. "Those days are gone."
Political pressure
Lambert has written the names of Republican political candidates on the big
white hay bales in his pasture. Missing is the name of local Republican
Marion Milne, who has represented the district in the House for six years
and voted in favor of civil unions.
She said it was the most difficult vote she's ever cast, but she still
believes it was right. It upheld the Constitution and obeyed a Supreme Court
ruling, she said, and it showed that the majority needs to protect
minorities' rights. Nevertheless, she said, she's worried about the fall
election.
"I suppose that's not the politically correct thing to say," Milne said. "I
should say, 'Yes, I'm very confident,' but I knew when I voted that I may
very well lose my seat over this. And I think this was the right thing to
do."
Lambert believes he's tapped into a broad river of discontent that is only
now being articulated.
"Everybody started talking, and I'm giving them a voice," Lambert said. "I
guess it's a pretty good voice."