benefits to same-sex couples violated the State's Common Benefits Clause, he did not agree with the majority's reliance on federal precedent, which does not hold binding on the Vermont state courts. He accused the majority on relying on the Supreme Court case Bowers v. Hardwick, which held that sodomy laws can be constitutionally criminalized, and not applying a suspect classification to sexual orientation in accordance to Vermont court jurisprudence developments. Justice Denise R. Johnson Justice Denise R. Johnson concurred with the majority's holding that the marriage statutes defining marriage between opposite couples violated the state constitution, but dissented from the remedy. Johnson wrote that she believed that the state was required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, not just offer the same benefits by a different name. She argued the marriage statutes were a violation of sex classification. She wrote, "I would grant the requested relief and enjoin defendants from denying plaintiffs a marriage license based solely on the sex of the applicants." Later developments In 2000, the Legislature responded to the Baker decision by instituting civil unions for same-sex couples after an acrimonious and deeply polarizing debate. The legislation, which took effect on July 1, also defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman, an explicit statement previously not found in Vermont's marriage licensing statute. In response to the court's decision in Baker and the legislature's enactment of civil unions, opponents of the legal recognition of same-sex unions formed an opposition organization called Take Back Vermont. In the elections that fall, six incumbent legislators who supported civil unions lost in the September primaries, five Republicans and one Democrat. In November another 11 civil union supporters lost their seats in the legislature. Exit polls showed voters were evenly split on the question of civil unions. When GLAD filed a lawsuit seeking same-sex marriage rights in Massachusetts, Bonauto tried to avoid winning a decision like Baker by emphasizing the status of marriage rather than its particular legal benefits and obligations. She said: "We spent more time in Massachusetts talking about how marriage is a basic civil and human right. It cannot be splintered into state and federal protections. We talked about what marriage is in our culture." New Jersey's highest court ruled unanimously in Lewis v. Harris on October 25, 2006, that excluding same-sex couples from marriage violated the state constitution's guarantee of equal protection. When the