June 29, 2005
REAPING WHAT YOU SOW
Canada approves same-sex marriage (Alexander Panetta, National Post, June 28th, 2005)
It was fought in courtrooms, in legislatures, in street protests, and one of the most turbulent debates in Canadian history was settled Tuesday with a vote in Parliament.The House of Commons voted 158 to 133 to adopt controversial legislation that will make Canada the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.
Several Liberals marked the occasion by invoking the memory of their party's philosopher king, Pierre Trudeau.
It was the late Liberal prime minister who decriminalized homosexuality in 1969, and whose Charter of Rights and Freedoms became the legal cudgel that smashed the traditional definition of marriage.
Barely two years ago the Liberal government was still fighting same-sex couples in courts across the land.
It changed its tune amid an onslaught of legal verdicts in eight provinces that found traditional marriage laws violated the charter's guarantee of equality for all Canadians.
"(This) is about the Charter of Rights," Prime Minister Paul Martin said earlier Tuesday.
"We are a nation of minorities. And in a nation of minorities, it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights.
"A right is a right and that is what this vote tonight is all about."
A bitter fight it was indeed, but it is striking how little headway opponents of gay marriage made over two years, despite respectably funded organization, a thorough vetting of the issue in the press and extensive public hearings. The slim majority that favoured this measure with varying degrees of enthusiasm held firm throughout and could not be swayed from the argument that the traditional definition of marriage was a huge oppression and an unacceptable violation of a fundamental human right. Few of them seem to have pondered why they would have scoffed at that very notion as recently as a few years ago and just what is was that changed their minds so quickly and dramatically. Equally hard to believe is that, as recently as ten years ago, a lead editorial in one of Vancouver’s gay publications thundered criticism of the movement to domesticate the gay lifestyle and asserted defiantly that it “was not about dental benefits.”
A few perceptive analysts have noted that there has been no stampede to the alter among gays. For many of them, the campaign seems to have been more about weddings than marriage, and most undoubtedly have enough foresight to see the burden beyond the blessing. But is that not now true of most of the heterosexual community? The notion that marriage is exclusively about celebrating erotic love and an ongoing (and cancellable) emotional “commitment”, with children just a by-product of choice, is now so throughly embedded in much of the culture that one suspects that the real reason this measure passed is that most folks were no longer able to verbalize any misgivings or articulate any reason to oppose it.
In the contemporary mind, a successful marriage is entirely a matter of interpersonal chemistry, and is measured by the fulfillment of emotional “needs”. Our ingrained rationalism resists and rejects any notion that its success or failure is connected to the goings-on of the society around it. Entirely a matter of personal choice, it neither requires nor merits any honour or support from the community, to which it contributes nothing in particular, or any preference over equally worthy “alternative” lifestyles. While the state now provides–even insists upon–more and more mediation and therapeutic resources to help divorcing couples weather their storm and spare us all that unseemly friction, it does little or nothing to try and save marriages in distress. If it tried to, many would object to an unwarranted public intrusion into the realm of the private. We have become so haunted by the spectre of being trapped in an unhappy or even tedious marriage, our very definition of the intolerable, we decline to gainsay even the most frivolous reasons for divorce. We tell ourselves it is all so personal and complicated and, as we are all Freudians now, we understand that marriage must rest on the ongoing psycho-sexual fulfillment to which everyone is entitled as a birthright.
Indeed, one could argue that we have not so much expanded the definition of marriage to include gays as simply acknowledged our acquiescence in their notion of what a marriage should be.
Posted by Peter Burnet at June 29, 2005 8:47 AMPresumably you meant stampede to the "altar", not stampede to the "alter"?
As for the low numbers actually marrying, that's something I discussed months ago on my own site. It's one of the reason I think gay marriage may not matter -- though I think legalizing polygamy, which will be the next big cause, would be.
Posted by: Jim Miller at June 29, 2005 9:57 AMThis is hardly the death-knell for Western civilisation.
Posted by: Ali Choudhury at June 29, 2005 11:26 AMWell, at least for some of what has characterized western civilization since the rise of Christianity and the fall of Rome, namely a culture informed by a basic morality and promoting an idealized view of family and sexuality which is rarely attained although held to be a universal good. Of course, traditional morality opens the door for critics of hypocrisy to rant and rave at civilization's failure to meet those goals so they would rather throw out the ideal and replace it with tasteless and ugly relativism. Civilizations don't come crashing down. They are dismantled brick by brick.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford,Ct. at June 29, 2005 12:42 PM"This is hardly the death-knell for Western civilisation."
No, that sounded long ago. If it were still alive this non-sense would not have surfaced.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at June 29, 2005 2:23 PMNeed I add that this is another reason to "Free Alberta Now."
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at June 29, 2005 2:27 PM. . . and if Premier Klein was a real Albertan, he'd invoke the "notwithstanding clause" to make this law invalid in Alberta - but I'm not holding my breath.
Posted by: obc at June 29, 2005 3:08 PMJim Miller brings up my point: how long before this becomes a precedent for legalizing polygamy? It seems to me that all the arguments in favor of same-sex marriage apply there as well, and the arguments against polygamy are largely the same as those against same-sex marriage.
Posted by: PapayaSF at June 29, 2005 4:35 PMAli:
Why do you think that way? Too few (gay) people? The game was up before they arrived? The West is much stronger than we think? Marriage is not as important as we dinosaurs think? I'm not sure you aren't right, but I'd like to hear the rationale.
Posted by: Peter B at June 29, 2005 8:21 PMPeter:
Gays are a tiny minority in any society. Since their cohabitation and associated sexual activities have long since been defacto tolerated (in the form of drastically weakened and irrelevant anti-sodomy laws), why is gay marriage such a huge and pernicious leap?
I don't believe sexual orientation is a matter of choice in most cases and can't think of any reason to oppose a homosexual union other than prejudice. Which despite what Edmund Burke might say, doesn't cut it for me. Maybe in the olden days when Biblical morality was being revealed, homosexuality was seen as an ignoble vice like promiscuity or drunkeness that could be controlled given suitable moral instruction. However I know too many gays personally whose feelings for their partners appear to be based on genuine love and not moral wretchedness.
What is critical for the health and well-being of a society, particularly at the lower levels, is sexual morality (tolerance for promiscuity, prostitution, adultery, orgies, deprecation of the institution of marriage and child-bearing) among the general, heterosexual population. If someone could convince me that allowing gay marriage would have a negative effect on morality and sexual morality of society at large, then I would be inclined to oppose it.
Unlike drug legalisation I don't see enough pernicious knock-on effects.
As for Papaya's remarks I doubt polygamy is about to be legalised since there's little public calling for it.
Posted by: Ali Choudhury at June 30, 2005 6:13 AM"as for Papaya's remarks I doubt polygamy is about to be legalized since there little public calling for it"
As opposed to the general public demand for homosexual marrriage?
Posted by: h-man at June 30, 2005 7:51 AMhttp://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/04/10/gay-marriage-050410.html
Posted by: Ali Choudhury at June 30, 2005 8:40 AMNo one has ever forbidden a gay man to marry a gay woman. The arguments are fatuous and always have been. There is a strong movement among the irreligious to decimate any hold traditional religion has on society. It is all couched in happy "libertarian" language, and it will ultimately be successful for one reason:
"Believers" no longer believe in absolutes.
Gay marriage became inevitable when the churches began to accept divorce because a marriage that is not for life is not a marriage.
What we need now is for the churches to define a "True Marriage" or a "Christian Marriage" that is legally binding and refuse to marry anyone unwilling to accept the terms.
But it won't happen because most churches are more concerned with adding numbers than their faith in God. It is feel good all the time religion.
Posted by: Randall Voth at June 30, 2005 8:48 AMThe issue is not about allowing gay people to cohabitate or to set up a legal partnership with joint rights to property, inheritance, visitation, etc. This gay people already have. The issue is around compelling the state to use the institution of marriage to establish this partnership.
I would oppose this if for no other reason than it is an attempt by a few to change the meaning of a commonly understood word. It is as if the owner of a deli that sells ham sandwiches, after seeing his business drop because of the popularity of low fat chicken sandwiches by his competitors and the influx of jewish and muslim people, demanded to have his sandwiches designated as chicken sandwiches. "There is no difference, a chicken sandwich is just a piece of meat between two slices of bread, and that is what I sell", he would argue.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at June 30, 2005 9:20 AMOur local burglar-rights group is encouraged.
We're asking our state to recognize our profession and license its members. We make good money and are only a minor annoyance to most people. Insurance reimburses our ma.. hosts so who's hurt?
It's long overdue to recognize us as just another occupation with skills.
Posted by: John J. Coupal at June 30, 2005 9:50 AMJohn:
You can count on my support as a conservative given that you stand for unregulated hours, open shops and no income tax.
Posted by: Peter B at June 30, 2005 1:25 PMRobert - another way to say it would be:
We are changing the definition of milk to include all varieties of fruit juice because milk discriminates against the lactose intolerant. By changing the definition, everyone will finally be able to benefit from drinking healthy milk.
Or, more realistically, forcing all countries to use a single currency.
Posted by: Randall Voth at June 30, 2005 5:55 PMAli:
There was little public calling for many of the most objectionable Supreme Court decisions of the past 40+ years. Some of them were inevitable (like Brown), but many were not, and have provided a rabidly vocal elitist minority with the opening to try to 'remake' society based on the wishes of perhaps 10-15% of the nation (if that).
With respect to polygamy, it only takes one case. The Court certainly left itself open for future problems by ducking the Newdow case last year, and the Ten Commandments decisions this week will lead to more of the same battles ahead. In fact, Roy Moore should probably feel a bit vindicated - had he just put the rock out by the street instead of in the rotunda, he might still be in office in AL today.
There is no clearer example of this than the Court's willingness to reverse itself on previous 'conservative' social decisions while refusing to do so on 'liberal' ones. Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens, O'Connor, and Breyer do not need the public calling to pave society just the way they want to (like Douglas, Warren, Brennan, and Marshall before them).
Posted by: jim hamlen at June 30, 2005 11:20 PM