Web site 'takes back' Vermont By David W. Smith The Barre Montpelier Times Argus and the Rutland Herald Sunday, August 6, 2000 WEST TOPSHAM - The "Take Back Vermont" movement has been beaten to the punch in cyberspace. A new Web site at www.takebackvermont.com shares, or perhaps steals, its slogan but doesn't share its politics. While "Take Back Vermont" usually expresses dissatisfaction with the Legislature, particularly with its recent civil unions law, the site supports giving gay couples marriage-like benefits. Jessamyn West of West Topsham created the site to counter the black and white "Take Back Vermont" signs appearing in lawns and storefronts throughout the state. "For me, (the signs are) just like someone scowling out the window at you," said West, a Web site designer and manager who divides her time between Vermont and Seattle. With her hair tied up in a scarf and a ring in her nose, West epitomizes the back-to-the-land farmhouse owner with an urban sensibility. With the help of a friend in Texas, she rushed out a Web site with a decidedly pro-civil union slant in just four days. "Face it, folks ... no matter what happens, there will always be people who have different lifestyles than you do, and there will always be people who do things you'd rather not have them do," the site's manifesto states. "The only question is, do you tolerate them as they tolerate you, or do you persecute them?" Takebackvermont.com contains links to information about civil unions and gay marriage, newspaper articles, letters to the editor, a journal of West's experiences during the site's history (less than two weeks), photographs and some informal, conversational material. West offers suggestions to paint over a "Take Back Vermont" sign, if so inclined: Take Crack Vermont, Bake a Cake Vermont, Bake Tack Vermont and so on. The issue of defacing signs has elicited more discussion and disagreement from her online friends than any other, she said. She herself is of two minds about the morality of such an act. While she probably wouldn't ruin anyone's property herself, she feels the signs have the potential to be hurtful. "It's certainly different than spray painting someone's car," said West. "I went outside in Topsham one morning and all the signs had big pink triangles on them. I thought it was hilarious. Pink triangles, once used to mark homosexuals in Nazi Germany, are now seen as a symbol of gay pride. West said she first heard the "Take Back Vermont" slogan in mid-May after returning from a prolonged stay on the West Coast. She wasn't sure what it meant and started asking questions. "It seemed like something you'd get behind. It's a punchy slogan," she said. "After a while it sort of became obvious that it centered around civil unions and voting out the people who supported it." While she knows that many people who post the signs are trying to express a general dissatisfaction with government, not just opposition to the recognition of same-sex couples, West said the signs still strike her as hateful. She won't shop in stores that display them. "It's like running the Confederate flag on the top of the capitol building," she said. "Maybe it's about the good old South, maybe not." West wrote about the events in the Topsham-Corinth area, which she said is loaded with "Take Back Vermont" signs, in an online journal she maintains and discussed the issue with people all over the country. One man, Ken Comer of Texas, ended up registering the domain name and paying the fee. Comer helped with the content, interviewing a California woman who traveled to Vermont for a civil union ceremony with her partner. While West doesn't characterize herself as a "window-smasher," she was involved with some protest activities while in Seattle, including membership in what she calls "radical librarian organizations." She helped out during protests of the World Trade Organization. Her "Take Back Vermont" site went online less than two weeks ago, after four days of work. "It got tons of traffic right away," she said. "The online community just embraced us." While a few hundred visits to the site per day isn't a huge number, West feels it's pretty good for a project that hasn't made a push to connect with the cyberspace community yet. Her site has been picked up by a major online conversation site called Metafilter, which sends surfers to interesting sites to spark debate. Orange County, where West is based, has been the center of a lot of civil union-related attention since Corinth Town Clerk Susan Fortunati announced she would refuse to grant licenses to same-sex couples. Fortunati recently appointed an assistant to deal with civil union licenses. Still, the tension is high, some residents say. "It's like ground zero here," said Linda Weiss, a member of Corinth's planning commission and school board. Weiss helped organize an open letter published in two newspapers last week, stating that people were becoming concerned about the hostility the issue has caused in their community. The advertisement praised Fortunati for her decision to hire an assistant who will deal with requests for civil union licenses. It also urged people to try to start working together again. The letter was signed by 168 people. "It's not pro-civil union necessarily," said Weiss. "It was an effort to keep the issue from tearing the town apart." Graffiti saying "AIDS kills queers" and "God hates fags," written in orange paint, have appeared on Route 25 between Topsham and Corinth, Weiss said. "Take Back Vermont" signs are everywhere. People were desperate to regain some of the sense of community they used to feel, said Weiss, including people who oppose civil unions. She and other organizers had no trouble finding people willing to sign the letter and contribute money for the ads. "People were pressing $20 bills in our hands and saying, 'That God you're doing this,'" Weiss said. People who post the signs probably have many interpretations of 'Take Back Vermont," Weiss said, and she's less concerned about politics than simply seeing people get along again. "Each individual probably has his own reason," Weiss said. "It's very hard to pick a slogan." West estimated that 10 percent to 20 percent of the people in her town have posted signs. It's a complicated issue, she said, and "Take Back Vermont" probably has more meanings than other slogans that surfaced after the passage of the bill. "Remember in November," for example, strikes her as more of a threat directed against legislators who supported civil unions. "And then there was "Vote 'em Out," which thankfully never caught on," she said. West is willing to include information and links on her Web site to groups that don't support civil unions, but so far has found just one site that deals directly with the issue in Vermont, from the Family Research Council. In general, while there's plenty of information about gay and lesbian marriages, she feels the online community isn't paying too much attention to what's going on in Vermont. She hopes, until November anyway, that Takebackvermont.com will draw and educate people from all sides of the issue. "What I'd really like it to be is a site you go to for information," she said. "Ultimately I think there's a lot of people who know about the way a law is made because of (civil unions)."