TAKE BACK
VERMONT

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A catchy phrase is making the rounds in Vermont

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To Terry Dorsett, "Take Back Vermont" means the civil-union law needs to be repealed.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."