Legal Gay Marriage

[Boston Guy]

I see that the Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled that same-sex couples have the right to legally marry in the province, pronouncing Canadian law on traditional marriage unconstitutional, effective immediately. The Court further ordered that marriage licenses be granted to gay couples effectively immediately and also recognized the January, 2001 marriage of Joe Varnell and Kevin Bourassa as legal as of that date, effectively making them the first gay married couple in the world.

 

The Ontario court, in making this ruling, joins the Appeals Court in British Columbia and lower courts in Quebec, all of which have ruled that denying gays the right to marry is a violation of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Unlike the other courts, which had given the federal government of Canada from one to two years to change the federal marriage law, the Ontario court made its decision effective now, stating that to wait is simply to further deny the plaintiffs their constitutional rights.

 

The federal goverment has until June 30 to appeal the decision to the Canadian Supreme Court, but essentially all (except possibly one; I seem to recollect that there is one holdout) of the leading candidates to succeed Prime Minister Jean Chretien have stated that they were in favor of legalizing gay marriage. So even though a parliamentary committee has been studying the issue and holding very controversial meetings around Canada, it's quite possible that the goverment won't appeal. In fact, Martin Cauchon, the Federal Justice Minister and technically the person who will have to decide if an appeal will be made, said "we see the direction the courts are going now."

 

The issue is potentially explosive and some people are comparing this decision to the 1954 United States Supreme Court decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the desegregation of schools, and the 1929 English Privy Council case recognizing Canadian women as "persons."

 

My question is twofold:

 

(1) For our Canadian friends, how do you think this will play out in Canada? Do you think it will be a great source of controversy? Or do you think it more likely that Canadians will simply accept it and move forward? What about the conservative religious groups? And what about Alberta, which might opt of the decision?

 

(2) For the rest of us in other countries (not just the US), what do you think the impact of legal gay marriage in Canada is likely to be in whatever country you live in?

 

BG

[+ Hoover42]

Hi BG,

 

I noticed an article on CNN's web site dated May 20, 2003 that seems relevant:

 

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9905/20/canada.gay.right/index.html

 

The article seems to suggest that they were changing the official definition of "spouse" in Ontario, not actually legalizing same-sex marriage.

 

Were you referring to something more recent?

[Boston Guy]

Yes, the situation has changed. There was a decision today by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/06/10/international1615EDT0684.DTL

 

BG

[Michael]

Yes, a very significant decision with immediate effect which included an order requiring the City of Toronto to issue marriage licenses to the plaintiffs.

 

One of the couples (Michael Leshner and Michael Stark) picked up their license a few hours after the court decision and were married in a civil ceremony today.

[greatservice4u]

This is a great accomplishment and congrats to those that have fought wo hard to achieve this...it is good for all in the world...having said that ....

 

Let it be known that I am not a big fan of "marriage". I have no desire to be straight and I proud to be gay and enjoy the freedoms that it affords.

 

I am pleased however that those of us in the community that desire a religous type of recognition for their committment can now have it.

 

We have been lucky for many years in Ontario. Our legal rights are strongly protected in the Charter and we do have strength in the eyes of the law. We have long been recognized as "partners" for the purposes of taxes,benefits,and spousal rights.

 

As far as Alberta....it is no different than the west of the United States...education and understanding on our behalf will eventually bring them around...sadly there is still fear based hate in the world and it is this that we must be on guard for...we must always stand togeather to protect ourselves from the likes of those everywhere who would bring us harm.<ie Matthew Sheppard>

 

It will be resisted by some churches as they fear and are hateful. They too will fall in time

 

In peace happiness and the right to choose I remain

 

Jason

 

[http://www.gaydar.co.uk/yummmeeeone]

[[email protected]]

[Guest Dan]

>

>One of the couples (Michael Leshner and Michael Stark) picked

>up their license a few hours after the court decision and were

>married in a civil ceremony today.

>

>

Yes, now we too can be as miserable as our straight married friends!

 

Dan Dare

http://meetlocalmen.com/mlm/dandarela.html

 

"Marriage is a great institution, but who wants to be in an institution?"

[trilingual]

As far as acceptance of the decision, it's going to be like everything else, everywhere else. There will be some commotion from the right-wingers and fundamentalist Christians, and then it will all die out once people realize that the sky hasn't fallen in or the earth opened up underneath their feet in divine retribution. Life will go on normally, millions of heterosexual men won't be divorcing their wives to marry other guys, and it'll all soon be "non-news" and in 20 years people will be wondering what all the controvesy was about!

[Luv2play]

For some time now I have felt that Canada is moving ever further away from the USA in terms of social values. Living as I do half the year in each country, I can see and feel these trends at first hand. While both countries are "New World" entities, built up from immigration originally European and then from other cultures, I think that somewhere around the early 1970's we started to diverge from our US brethern.

 

It would take a book or three to expound on the theory but if I had to distill it down to a seminal moment, it would be when Pierre Trudeau, then our Justice Minister (before he became Prime Minister) said in 1969 (wonderful timing!), that the "government had no business in the bedrooms of the nation". Can you just imagine Nixon saying anything like that at that time in the US!!! Since then Canada has enacted a Charter of Rights (we previously relied on the British common law) and courts in Canada have dragged legislatures along in expanding and solidifying the rights of minorities in our society.

 

We are basically a conservative country, but with a strong compassionate and humanitarian tradition (we did not wipe out our native Indians but rather entered into treaties with them, as one example), and this continues to this day. We are the most heavily taxed people in the New World, and those monies go to all sorts of welfare schemes. We have socialized medicine, legal aid, social housing, unemployment insurance practically for the asking, you name it. If a refugee washes up on our shores, he/she is given a lawyer, free housing, welfare, the works! Sweden should be so generous!

 

But Canadians are generally a happy lot, we enjoy a good standard of living, and we have a "live and let live" attitude that the courts are merely reflecting in their judgments. Sometimes it can be frustrating, especially if you think someone is taking advantage of our good natured attitudes, but then you consider the alternative, which is often expressed in violence against an overly reactionary society. Maybe we have found some happy medium. But as we discover day after day, that medium keeps changing all the time.

 

[Boston Guy]

The latest so far... Tues, June 17, 3:30 pm

 

Here's the latest so far:

 

http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=752EFCE3-1487-4122-811F-D67DB3D5BBBE

 

It looks like the cabinet, which is still meeting, is likely to accept legal marriage and move forward with supporting legislation when Parliament returns in the Fall.

 

BG

[Boston Guy]

It's now official -- gay marriage in Canada

 

The cabinet meeting has ended and Chretien just made the announcement: Canada will not appeal the court decisions legalizing gay marriage.

 

There are still issues to resolve, including whether or not Alberta (and potentially other provinces) can use the 'notwithstanding' clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to opt out of this decision. But gay marriage is already legal in Ontario today and will remain so and will be legal in much of the rest of Canada soon.

 

This is monumental: the first large country to legalize gay marriage in the world.

 

BG

 

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030617.wsoxx617/BNStory/National/

[trilingual]

RE: It's now official -- gay marriage in Canada

 

It's big news indeed. So much of the prejudice and discrimination against gays is based on the false premise that we're incapable of developing and sustaining loving, long-term relationships. Legitimizing our relationships will go a very long way towards ending the discrimination against us.

 

I hope Canadian legislators (is anyone reading this?) will make sure that any new legislation covering same-sex marriage explicitly makes such relationships contracted in other countries recognized in Canada. That will help immeasurably in strengthening the existing marriage schemes in other countries that have legitimized same-sex relationships. It will also help push countries where the rights of same-sex partners are not yet completely equal to those of opposite-sex couples to move ahead and make same-sex marriages or unions the legal equivalent of opposite-sex marriages.

 

Momentum seems to be building. The upcoming U.S. Supreme Court sodomy law ruling, if based on equal protection, also may help break the logjam in this country. Civil union legislation has been pending for years in the Brazilian Congress. With a progressive government in power, if this Latin American nation of 175,000,000 (the world's largest Roman Catholic country) makes the necessary changes to its civil code to make marriage a relationship between two PERSONS (instead of a man and a woman), the floodgates really may open. There's already been some progress in Argentina and Chile, where the Catholic Church remains very powerful, politically (it's still the established church in Argentina).

 

I didn't expect to live to see changes of this magnitude, but it's a credit to the efforts and perseverance of so many people, in so many countries. In much less than the span of a lifetime, millenia of discrimination and bigotry have been reversed. That's powerful!

[+ glutes]

RE: It's now official -- gay marriage in Canada

 

>

>Momentum seems to be building. The upcoming U.S. Supreme

>Court sodomy law ruling, if based on equal protection, also

>may help break the logjam in this country.

 

And if the Supremes next Monday rule against the Texas plaintiffs??

Of course they won't discriminate. And put a damper on the SF Gay Pride???

[trilingual]

RE: It's now official -- gay marriage in Canada

 

Yeah, it's possible that the Supremes will rule against the Texas plaintiffs, but I'm guessing they won't. If they wanted to let the Texas sodomy law stand, they didn't have to accept the Texas case for hearing, because they already had ruled such laws constitutional in the Bowers v. Hardwick case. The court doesn't ordinarily accept cases where the law is settled. The fact that they did take the Texas case strongly suggests that they want to revisit the Bowers decision and perhaps overturn it, under the equal protection amendment. (Bowers was decided based on the right to privacy, which the court found didn't apply to faggots.) It would be sad, indeed, if the Supremes were also to find that we're not entitled to equal protection under the law. But that would be a tough argument to make, especially for strict constructionists like the conservative majority on this court.

 

I'm sure we'll be talking about this a lot more next Monday, when the decision is likely to be issued. Meanwhile, I'll be spending the weekend steeling myself up for this by immersing myself in the new Harry Potter book. . .

[+ nycman]

RE: It's now official -- gay marriage in Canada

 

>Bowers was decided based on the right to privacy,

>which the court found didn't apply to faggots...

 

The best...and funniest...Bowers summary I have ever heard.