HE PROCESS OF stitching Vermont back together after its rending election fight over civil unions for gays and lesbians began Tuesday night with Governor Howard Dean's gracious statement accepting his own decisive reelection victory: ''Our task over the next few months is to reach out to all Vermonters.''
Dean had signed the state's pioneering but controversial civil-union law after the state's highest court sensibly ruled that homosexual couples could not be denied the legal benefits that married couples have. His opponent, Ruth Dwyer, made criticism of Dean's support of the law a centerpiece of her campaign.
Although Dwyer Tuesday gained even a smaller share of the vote than she did two years ago when she ran for governor without the civil union issue, the new law clearly played a role in the defeat of several incumbent state legislators who had backed civil unions. Those losses will let Republicans take control of the House of Representatives from the Democrats.
The civil union law was passed last April after a lively but respectful debate in the Legislature enhanced by an extraordinary series of public hearings. Discussion of the law in the election campaign did not always reach that standard. It will be instructive now to see what steps Dean and other political and community leaders in the state take ''to reach out to all Vermonters.'' In remarks to reporters Tuesday night, Dean said it would include seeking common ground with civil-union opponents on other issues, including lowering property taxes.
Part of the process of defusing the civil union issue will simply be letting the public see what rights and responsibilities gay and lesbian couples gain by joining in civil unions. Would opponents object to a gay or lesbian person making decisions for a partner who is incapacitated? Would they recoil at partners in civil unions being held to the same laws on child custody, support, alimony, and assumption of debts that married couples must obey? If a gay or lesbian couple takes over a struggling dairy farm, would opponents of civil unions withhold from them the benefits the state extends to family farmers?
These are the workaday effects of the law. It does not challenge or undercut the institution of marriage. It does make Vermont a leader in righting an injustice. ''We will continue to be a state where we respect all Vermonters,'' Dean said Tuesday, ''and we will judge each other based on who we are, not what we are.'' That message should be one that everyone in Vermont, to say nothing of the nation, can unite around.
