Has Vermont declined into a disease-laden, hedonistic cesspool since Howard Dean signed the nation's first civil union legislation there almost four years ago, where heterosexual marriages have devolved into utterly meaningless institutions, and boys exchange vows (and fluids) with goats?

Well, no.

To Vermont's town clerks and justices of the peace, civil unions have become almost as routine as traditional weddings. And readers of the state's newspapers see civil union announcements alongside wedding notices nearly every week.

"It's just everyday business," said Brattleboro Town Clerk Annette Cappy, who a few minutes after midnight on July 1, 2000, became the first Vermont clerk to issue a gay couple a license for a civil union. Last year her office dispensed 185 civil union licenses and 318 marriage licenses.

Just four years ago, civil unions for gay couples were considered a positively radical idea. Now, they are practically routine in Vermont.

In fact, in some parts of the country, civil unions have become the moderate fallback position in the nation's growing debate over gay marriage.

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Vermont officials are amazed at the shift in political reality.

"Now our 'radical' civil union thing is the compromise proposal for moderates," said Attorney General William Sorrell.

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The issue caused a political backlash in Vermont at the time [of its passage]. But now, even some state legislators who were voted out of office because of their support for civil unions have gotten elected again.

Vermont Gov. James Douglas, a Republican, said in 2000 that the Legislature was moving too quickly in approving civil unions. But now he opposes a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Civic dialogue also has returned to normal.

Linda Weiss, a justice of the peace in Corinth, a community at the heart of the civil unions opposition movement four years ago, said many of her conservative neighbors have let go of their anger.

"Although there's still a fair amount of grumbling, there's much more of an attitude of, 'Well, if that's what they want to do, let them,"' said Weiss, who had a civil union ceremony with her partner more than three years ago.

There's a paranoia on the religious right that people who promote "the homosexual agenda" (as a certain hunting-with-Cheney Supreme Court Justice put it) wont be satisfied until every *sacred* institution they cherish will be trampled on and done away with, leaving liberals and gays free to remake the whole of society in any Sodomite way that they see fit.

The reality, on the other hand, is that when same-sex couples obtain equal rights under the law, they seem pretty happy, and have no urge to stamp on whatever you do with your wife or husband.

Kind of undercuts the whole slippery-slope angle, don't it?