I, Article 7), which guarantees all citizens equal benefit and protection of the law, guarantees same-sex couples' right to the substantial benefits and protections of marriage. They questioned the lower court's justification for limiting marital status to male-female couples—linking marital status to procreation and child rearing, noting that Vermont law recognized same-sex couples' right to adopt children and to parent children conceived by natural and artificial means. They questioned how the state could explicitly allow same-sex partners to parent, but deny them and their adopted children the benefits and security of marriage. The justices questioned whether the state's position constituted gender discrimination and whether modern science was undermining the idea that only male-female couples could procreate. The state nevertheless maintained that this was a question of social policy within the purview of the legislature in "furthering the link between procreation and child rearing.". When a justice asked if the state saw marriage as a fundamental right, the attorney for the state answered "Yes, but it's a fundamental right between a man and a woman." Opinion of the Court On December 20, 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the denial of marriage benefits to same-sex partners was a violation of the state constitution. In the majority opinion authored by Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy and joined by two other judges, the court held that the state must guarantee the same protections and benefits to same-sex couples that it does to male-female spouses, and added that the legislature should, in a "reasonable period of time", find a way to provide same-sex couples with those benefits. Justices John Dooley and Denise R. Johnson each wrote separate opinions concurring that the exclusion of same-sex couples to the state's marriage rights was unconstitutional, but with different rationales. Majority opinion The majority opinion was authored by Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy and joined by justices James Morse and Marilyn Skoglund. In it, the court dismissed the plaintiff's contention that the denial of same-sex unions violated Vermont marriage statutes. The court held that while the statutes did not explicitly limit marriage to male-female pairs, both the common dictionary definition of marriage and the legislative intent when the relevant statutes were enacted in 1945 favored the interpretation of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The court also interpreted the terms bride and groom as being gender-specific. With respect to the State Constitution's Common Benefit Clause,