YNDONVILLE, Vt. - The final ads of the campaign are about education.
The speeches are on health care.
And the debates are about snowmobiles and cell phone towers.
Nobody even has to mention the one topic on everyone's mind: same-sex couples, and whether their relationships should be validated by society.
On Tuesday, Vermont voters will decide whether to toss out the Democratic Legislature and a Democratic governor who, under pressure from the state courts, this year created ''civil unions,'' a legal status that entitles same-sex couples to the same benefits, protections, and responsibilities of married heterosexuals. And although on the trail she focuses on other issues, the GOP nominee for governor, Ruth Dwyer, is the champion of anti-civil union forces, so if she wins she is expected to seek to roll back the law.
This year's gubernatorial election in Vermont is a tight three-way race. Democratic Governor Howard Dean, a Burlington physician and five-term incumbent once mentioned as a possible candidate for president, is being challenged not only from the right, by Dwyer, a horse trainer from Thetford, but also from the left, by Progressive Party nominee Anthony Pollina, a community organizer from Burlington. Although polls indicate Dean is slightly ahead of Dwyer, there is a good chance Pollina will do well enough to deny Dean a majority, and because of Vermont's unusual election laws, that means the next governor will be chosen by the next Legislature, which may well be Republican-controlled.
The election is being watched across the country, and is being funded almost entirely by out-of-state interests that have turned Vermont into an unwilling laboratory for attitudes toward homosexuality.
During a lengthy debate a little more than a week ago, civil unions were barely mentioned. But outside, supporters of the Republican candidate were claiming that elementary schoolchildren were being taught to use dental dams, while supporters of the Democrat said Republicans were motivated by hate.
Last week, as many as one-half of Vermont voters received a mailing featuring a photograph of two men kissing and the warning that ''homosexuals from across the country are now planning special honeymoon trips to Vermont and many experts predict hundreds will stay to turn Vermont into a San Francisco-like rural homosexual haven.''
Meanwhile, voters have been inundated with print, television, and radio ads promoting a more positive view of civil unions.
In one spot, Helena A. Blair of Williston, a 78-year-old Catholic mother of eight, talks about her gay son.
''All my son ever wanted ... is to have the opportunity to live peacefully in this world, with the same dignity and basic rights as everyone else,'' Blair says. ''And that's what I want, too.''
In a state that prides itself on leaving people to themselves, sexual orientation is in the air like never before. The Democratic candidate for US Senate, Edward S. Flanagan, is gay. The Republican candidate for the US House, Karen Kerin, is transsexual.
But the candidates' positions are so well known that they don't have to discuss them, and both sides say that the swing voters, those who are still undecided, can be swayed by other issues.
''The governor has done his best to keep this issue low key and not inflame people, but this is far and away the biggest issue of the campaign,'' said Bill D. Dodge, 44, a Burlington art gallery owner.
The candidates have been engaged in recent days in a bitter fight over education. Dwyer has accused Dean of eroding the quality of Vermont schools; Dean has denied the charge.
At the debate in Lyndonville, where the candidates were questioned by a panel of Vermont journalists and then by residents in the audience, the only question that touched on civil unions concerned how the candidates would attempt to heal the state after the election. Most of the time, the candidates were quizzed about the rural economy, land conservation, health care, prison spending, and moose hunting.
At one point, Dean, challenged on his position on snowmobiling, declared, ''We will continue to support snowmobilers as they have supported us.''
At another point, Dwyer and Dean debated the practicality of disguising cellular telephone towers as trees, with Dean arguing that the fake trees are too tall to fit in among Vermont's foliage, and Dwyer arguing that the fake trees are just fine.
And there were moments that were unexpectedly revealing. Dwyer acknowledged that she doesn't have time to read a book right now, that she hasn't seen a movie in 15 years, and that she couldn't think of a historical figure she would like to talk with on the ride home. Dean chose Harry S Truman for his car ride, while Pollina named Gandhi, ''because he wouldn't talk too much ... and we wouldn't have to stop to get anything to eat.''
Outside, partisans on both sides were in no mood for jokes.
''We can't have God in the schools, but we can have gays,'' said Clayton G. Placey, 76, a Wells River real estate broker.
''Homosexuality is here, and we're not going to make it go away, but we just don't want it rammed down our throats,'' said Reed A. Garfield, 57, of Lyndon, a newspaper production manager.
''Vermonters overwhelmingly opposed this legislation and the way they went about it, and the current government failed to listen to its constituency,'' said Ken V. Blodgett, 33, a delivery truck driver from Lowell. ''We're not prepared for socialistic change, which I belive has been slowly and incrementally deteriorating the moral fabric of our state.''
Some academics agree that the civil unions issue has energized a group of Vermonters already angry at state government because of previous measures changing land conservation and property tax laws. That unrest is represented in the most popular anti-Dean slogan, ''Take Back Vermont.''
''There are people here, hardworking people earning traditional livings dairy farming or tapping sugar, and they're feeling like what they think of traditionally as their Vermont is no longer,'' said Judith A. Layzer, a political scientist at Middlebury College.
Ironically, none of the three major candidates for governor was born in Vermont. Dean was born in New York City, Dwyer in Ohio, and Pollina in New Jersey.
The civil union supporters reject any notion that Take Back Vermont represents anything other than hostility toward homosexuals.
''This is people's innate hatred,'' said Ed M. DeMott, a 36-year-old nutritionist from Danville. ''I always knew there was a narrow-minded population in Vermont, but I'm surprised how vocal they can be.''
The civil unions debate has divided Vermont like few issues can. Already, five Republican lawmakers who support civil unions were defeated in the GOP primary by anti-civil union candidates.
Supporters of civil unions say they are regularly accused of being gay with epithets most often associated with a junior high school locker room.
Critics of civil unions are accused of being haters, or even Nazis. And people on both sides say political signs have been defaced.
''I fear what is happening to Vermont this year,'' said Democratic US Senator Patrick Leahy.
