JOANNA L. GROSSMAN The Vermont Legislature, Inventor of the "Civil Union," Grants Full Marriage Rights to Same-Sex Couples: Why It Decided Civil Unions Were Not Sufficient to Ensure Equality FindLaw columnist, Hofstra law professor, and visiting Vanderbilt law professor Joanna Grossman discusses the reasons that convinced the Vermont legislature -- without any prompting from the state's courts -- to grant full marriage rights to same-sex couples. As Grossman explains, the same legislature that begrudgingly invented the civil union as a marriage alternative has now concluded, based on the evidence presented to it, that in practice, civil-union couples are not treated as the equal of married couples. In this case, Grossman notes, "separate but equal" proved truly unequal in real-world scenarios where civil-union couples confronted obstacles married couples did not face.