BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – Guest speakers brought in by a group opposed to same-sex marriage got an earful from an audience mostly sympathetic to it.

The Vermont Marriage Advisory Council, a newly formed group based in Rutland, organized Saturday’s event at the University of Vermont and brought in speakers from two national groups opposed to same-sex marriage.

“Marriage is a vital social institution,” Monte Stewart of the Utah-based Marriage Law Foundation told about 100 people gathered at UVM’s Davis Center. “There’s a reason that marriage as an institution is virtually universal around the world.”

He argued that “genderless marriage,” which could unite any two people, would cause a decline in the family unit and be harmful for children.

“Marriage can be the union between man and woman or it can be the union of any two people,” Stewart said. “Vermont cannot have both.”

Patrick Fagan, a senior fellow at the conservative Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., listed statistics that he said showed the most “competent and confident” children are born of traditional marriages.

Many in the audience disagreed.

“It’s nonsensical that marriage can’t have multiple meanings,” Paul Deslandes of Burlington told Stewart and Fagan. “That’s simply scare tactics.”

A spokesperson for the Vermont Marriage Advisory Council said the group was formed as a counter to what it sees as a pro-gay-marriage bias on a legislative task force studying the issue, the Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection.

“We’re trying to deliver educational information that is either being forgotten or avoided in the public debate,” said Steve Cable, the Marriage Advisory Council spokesperson.

The legislative task force is expected to report in April to lawmakers, who will then consider whether Vermont should move beyond its current law allowing civil unions for same-sex couples to full marriage.

Responding to controversy on campus caused by the appearance of Cable’s group, UVM President Daniel Fogel issued a letter to the campus on Friday saying he had “deep empathy for those who are affronted by the ideas and positions opposing gay marriage,” but added that the university cannot “practice selective exclusion of certain points of view.”

Dot Brauer, director of the campus Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Allied Services, said some on campus had “strong feelings” about having the event take place at UVM. But she added, “It’s consistent with the principle that in a free society you support the expression of opposing views,” she said.