Most of the Green Mountain State's activists and politicians, whose personal and vitriolic debate in 2000 created the nation's first civil union law, find it hard to believe their once-radical political compromise has become the moderate alternative to gay marriage.

"It's a marvel that has happened," Vermont Law School professor Greg Johnson told the Associated Press in March 2004.

"It's only taken these few years for the phrase to have universal currency," he said.

But those who helped draft and pass the law in 2000 point out that shift may have more to do with the search for a compromise than support of full rights for homosexual couples.

"A number of people who might not have thought it remotely acceptable three to five years ago all of a sudden look at it as a lot more palatable than outright marriage," Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell said recently.

But the road to the nation's first civil union law was anything but smooth and the repercussions of how it is written continue to impact the political and legal lives of those touched by it.

By 1996, more than 30 states had outlawed gay marriage and the federal government had passed the Defense of Marriage Act -- all aimed at denying the benefits and government certification of same-sex unions. In response, homosexual advocates targeted the noted bastion of traditional liberalism, Vermont, hoping the state would support offering legal protections for gay couples.

Three gay couples filed suit arguing that Vermont's decision to deny them marriage licenses violated the state constitution's "common benefits" clause that guarantees the state will grant rights and benefits equally to all residents.

In December 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court weighed in, saying that Vermont was violating its own constitution, but the high court left it up to the state legislature to decide on a remedy.

Legislators faced two immediate options. One was to permit gay marriage, something most members opposed and, according to polls at the time, only 13 percent of state residents supported. The other was to amend the state constitution to eliminate marriage from the "common benefits" provision, a process that would take four years, during which gay marriages would have to be granted.

Facing those two unpopular routes, the legislature started to draft a compromise: a state-recognized union of two people that granted marriage rights, but avoided the formal authorization of gay marriage.

It may have appeared the state was splitting hairs, but legal scholars said it was an important distinction. The U.S. Constitution, under its "full faith and credit clause," would have forced other states to recognize the rights of couples married in Vermont. Civil unions allowed Vermont to grant the rights without forcing other states to recognize the "marriage."

Although legislators appeared to have a compromise, debate in the legislature lasted four months and at times became personal and acrimonious.

"This is a sad, dark day for the state of Vermont, and God help us all," state Rep. George Allard said, part of a vocal and vehement group opposing the bill.

Allard and others turned their backs on another colleague, William Lippert, when the openly gay legislator called on representatives to pass the bill.

"We are not a burden on society," Lippert told a silent House. "We are not sinful. We do not indulge in unnatural behavior. We do not ask for special privileges."

In the end, both the state Senate and House adopted a bill and Democratic Gov. Howard Dean signed it into law, setting July 1, 2000 as the day it would go into effect. It was also what Dean later described as "the most important event in my political life."

"I never got to have a discussion with myself about whether this made any political sense or not because I knew that whether I was going to win the next election or lose it, that every day I was going to have to look at myself in the mirror and decide what kind of human being I was," Dean told Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press.

At midnight on July 1, the nation's first civil union ceremony was held in Brattleboro, Vt., where the town clerk opened the office late at night to accommodate the event. As of the beginning of March 2004, town clerks throughout the tiny New England state have issued some 6,800 civil unions. But of those, the vast majority -- more than 5,700 -- went to people from outside Vermont.

In the days and weeks after July 1, hundreds of couples flooded the state with requests for a union.

For those from Vermont, the union provided specific state-granted rights given to married couples -- from the ability to make medical decisions for partners and visit during family hours to breaks on property taxes and inheritances. Federal rights, like income tax breaks and Medicare and Social Security benefits, remained unavailable.

But those from outside the state sought official recognition of long-term relationships.

This phenomenon of non-Vermonters seeking state recognition of their relationship led to a legal wrinkle for many couples. Once in the Vermont civil union, it was difficult for people to get out of the relationship if it failed.

Given that no state recognized the quasi-gay marriage that civil unions represented, no state was willing to offer the quasi-gay divorce. A Texas court initially granted one, but the judge reversed his decision when he realized that to nullify the union was to acknowledge it had been a legal union.

In Vermont, legislators worried that courts might be flooded with such cases, so they wrote into the law that although any couple can get a civil union, at least one partner must be a Vermont resident in order to dissolve it. But the issue appears to be a minor one since out of the 6,800 unions, some 1,000 for Vermonters, only 29 couples have sought and received dissolution.

The social and political ramifications for Vermont, though, ran deeper than the legal snags. The passage of the nation's first civil union law led to the formation of angry counter-groups working under the banner of "Take Back Vermont."

In the fall of 2000, Democrats lost control of the state Senate, in part due to the vote. Dean, who had cruised to multiple reelections, narrowly fended off a campaign by a leading opponent to civil unions.

"We're the laughingstock of the country," Dick Lambert, who first created the "Take Back Vermont" signs and sold 5,000 out of his garage within three months of the law taking effect, told The Washington Post. "They think we're the gay state, but this has nothing to do with us."

But the uprising appeared to be short-lived. Although several legislators were defeated in 2000, several had won their seats back by 2004. Town clerks and justices of the peace have also seen communities begin to accept the civil union concept that once outraged them.

"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,'" Linda Weiss, a justice of the peace in Corinth, Vt., told the AP.

Gov. James Douglas, a Republican elected after Dean retired to run for president in 2004, reflects this shift in opinion. In 2000, Douglas said he believed the legislature was moving too quickly to invent the civil union. Now, he endorses the law, and is opposed to a federal constitutional amendment on gay marriage.

"I think most Vermonters have come to accept it, to live with it," Douglas said recently to a group of reporters.

Despite that acceptance, the Green Mountain State remains alone. Four years after the law's passage, and even as Massachusetts legislators eyed a similar civil union law, Vermont remains the only state to offer homosexual couples a legal partnership with all the state benefits that come with marriage.

-- By Lee Banville, Online NewsHour