Gay Marriage in Canada

[woodlawn]

For those interested in the topic of gay marriage, today's New York Times has an excellent article describing the reactions of Canada's gay community to the right they have so recently won.

 

Interestingly, the various reactions mirror the debate on this board between those who see the right to marry as confirming the mainstream status of gays in society, and those who are concerned that it will hasten the day when a unique "gay lifestyle" is no more than a relic of a bygone era as the "hippie lifestyle" is today.

[trilingual]

The debate in Canada seems to colored by the fact that "common law" relationships are recognized in Canadian law, and confer most if not all the benefits and obligations of formal civil marriage. Until I read the NY Times article, I wasn't aware that same-sex relationships in Canada were being treated as "common law" marriages. If that's correct, then there's less urgency for Canadian gays to be married formally, because the legal consequences of a long-term relationship are pretty much the same. Also, even without same-sex marriages being legalized, I believe it has been possible for some time now for a Canadian to sponsor his/her same-sex partner for immigration. I don't know if "common law" spouses in Canada are eligible for tax benefits available to married couples. Perhaps one of our Canadian posters knows?

 

In the U.S., the situation is quite different. Only some states recognize "common law" marriages, and I don't know that any of them extend that recognition to same-sex couples. Except in Vermont and, perhaps, Hawaii (and possibly California in the near future) the partners in a same-sex relationship enjoy few if any of the benefits routinely conferred on married people. Thanks to DOMA, they're explicitly excluded from any federal benefits they might otherwise enjoy, like joint tax filing privileges, or being able to sponsor a fiancé or spouse for immigration purposes. That perhaps explains why gay marriage is a somewhat more urgent issue in the U.S. than it is in Canada, because without civil marriage and recognition of such marriages by the federal government the myriad benefits that accrue to married couples will remain off-limits to same-sex partners.

[phage]

>Thanks to DOMA, they're

>explicitly excluded from any federal benefits they might

>otherwise enjoy, like joint tax filing privileges,

 

This is not a topic I’ve paid much attention to in the past because it just wasn’t applicable to me, but I thought there was actually a tax disadvantage to filing as a married couple if both people made about the same amount of money. Not as bad as ‘Married – filing separately,’ but still worse than if they could each file as ‘Single.’ Weren’t there politicians campaigning on eliminating the “marriage penalty”?

[Luv2play]

I have only followed the whole question of gay marriage in a cursory way, as I feel no great interest in getting married myself and at my stage in life do not see it as a real option for me. Twenty years ago would have been a completely different situation. In the last twenty years, things had changed in the sense that gays in many provinces had acquired rights similar to common law relationships for straights, which in Canada as a whole, confer virtually the same rights and obligations as the married status.

 

In recent years many provinces, including Quebec, had established procedures for civil unions for gays, although marriage itself was denied them, as it was covered by federal legislation (in Canada there is split jurisdiction between the federal and provincial levels of government, so that the federal law defines who can get married and the provincial law provides for the registering of marriages).

 

It was the federal law which was found to be unconstitutional by courts in British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario, but it was only the most recent Ontario decision that opened the way for gay marriages immediately, as the other two courts had given the federal government a grace period to amend the marriage law.

 

In those provinces where civil unions for gays were provided, there is not much change in the new situation, as I understand it, except that religious ceremonies will now be recognized by the government. Even before this gays had the right to adopt children, sponsor immigrant spouses, claim pension benefits etc, so no big change there, in those provinces where gay unions were recognized. But of course, this did not apply in such places as Alberta, where they have an extremely reactionary government when it comes to gay issues. But even now, these recalcitrant parties are threatening not to register gay marriages even if the federal government proceeds with the changes to the federal Marriage Act. This drama has yet to play out, but some feel that the resistance to gay marriages in these quarters will crumble once the federal government brings in the new legisation.

 

Time will tell!

[trilingual]

There IS a "marriage penalty" in U.S. tax law, but I'm not very clear about how it works. My understanding is that it tends to affect couples with higher earnings. But we have at least a couple of tax law experts who are regular posters, so maybe they can enlighten us. Of course, if the "penalty" is reduced or eliminated as a result of Bush's tax-cutting marathon, more married couples will benefit from being able to file jointly. But only heterosexual married couples, unless DOMA is repealed or found unconstitutional.

[Guest DevonSFescort]

Here's a link to the article (registration is required, but free and only takes a minute):

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/international/americas/31CANA.html

[Will]

I, too, read the NYT article with interest. The discussion here and elsewhere has tended to confuse two issues. One is the right to marry. The other is the nature of "gay" marriage. State-sanctioned same-sex marriage wouldn't "force" anybody to imitate heterosexual couples if they don't want to. But lots of gay people do, in fact, want the kind of suburban, middle-class family life that many straight people aspire to create. There was another article recently about a Chicago neighborhood in which that is happening. At all events, as far as I'm concerned anything that puts a crack in the template of what's "gay" and what's "not-gay" is welcome, and that goes for gay Ozzie-and-Harriet families. (Of course, there'd have to be David and Ricky as well.)

[woodlawn]

>I, too, read the NYT article with interest. The discussion

>here and elsewhere has tended to confuse two issues. One is

>the right to marry. The other is the nature of "gay"

>marriage. State-sanctioned same-sex marriage wouldn't "force"

>anybody to imitate heterosexual couples if they don't want to.

 

True. In Canada, however, I understand that the availability of a common law arrangement that creates the same rights as marriage means there is little reason for gay men to go through a marriage ceremony unless they want to express that their relationship is of the same nature as other marriages. As for the U.S., it seems to me that proposing marriage to a partner while making it clear that the only purpose of the marriage is to obtain certain legal and tax advantages for the couple would be viewed by many as somewhat cold.

 

> But lots of gay people do, in fact, want the kind of

>suburban, middle-class family life that many straight people

>aspire to create.

 

The comment I found most interesting in the article was that of Edward Lopez, who said that those who are concerned that the right to marry will destroy the uniqueness of the gay lifestyle are expressing the vestiges of a culture of victimization that exists in ghettos, or words to that effect.

[Guest DevonSFescort]

>The comment I found most interesting in the article was that

>of Edward Lopez, who said that those who are concerned that

>the right to marry will destroy the uniqueness of the gay

>lifestyle are expressing the vestiges of a culture of

>victimization that exists in ghettos, or words to that effect.

 

I think the gay ghetto has a good enough track record that there needn't be any rush to kill it off. When a neighborhood becomes a gay ghetto, that usually means a) its property values have gone up and will continue to go up b) there are lots of thriving small businesses, c) it has cultural attractions like an independent/foreign cinema, small theater/performing arts companies and a diverse array of good restaurants (Chicago's Boystown, I'm told, is an exception with regard to the restaurants.) d) it has a vibrant street life; people are out and about and mingle; e) crime is lower than average; f) the city as a whole gradually becomes safer for gays, who don't just live in the Castro any more than Chinese Americans just live in Chinatown (both groups are EVERYWHERE in SF); g) this benefits the city/region as a whole -- what Richard Florida calls "creative class" professionals (people who drive economic growth) are more likely to concentrate in areas where gays are concentrated because it's seen as a barometer of a place's tolerance.

 

I'm sure there are other pluses that I'm forgetting. Do you know of many (or even any) cities that are trying to get their gays to move out? Not only did gay neighborhoods represent the exception to white flight, they've made cities safer and more appealing for white, middle-class straights to come back to, at a time when some suburbs are doing creative zoning with an eye on keeping families with children from moving in (children are very expensive to educate, and the property taxes aren't enough to support them. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those same suburbs don't start sprucing up their gay-friendly image, hoping to draw more childless couples). If this is the "culture of victimization" in action, then maybe the culture of victimization has been getting a bad rap.

 

Now sure, there are some downsides, most notably a higher-than-average drug/alcohol abuse rate among gays and lesbians. (That said, I don't know whether the drug abuse rates for gays who live "in the ghetto" have been compared to gays who live in the suburbs and/or in more "integrated" neighborhoods.) If you're inclined to view promiscuity as a sign of social ills, then yes, I suspect the gay ghetto is "iller" than the integrated suburbs, although the Internet is doing its part to lessen the disparity. But even if you magnify the downsides they still don't outweigh the real benefits that cities derive from having them. Where is the evidence that gay ghettos represent a victimy outlook, or that there's anything outmoded about them? Maybe we benefit BOTH from gays being integrated into the suburbs (those that want to be) and there being gay centers to serve as hotbeds and connectors of creative activity.

 

Now, equal marriage rights need not necessarily threaten all that, but some of its proponents do seem to include what look to me like shades of social engineering among their motives, though they might not put it that way. Andrew Sullivan was widely quoted as having called for married gays who aren't monogamous to be socially stigmatized. That would certainly represent a major cultural shift in gay life, and it appears that he hopes to achieve that shift by domesticating gay men -- by giving them marriage. It's a kind of Trojan horse strategy. Whether the gays who marry actually decide to live their lives according to his prescription is another question. Still another is this: will the number of gays who opt to marry where they have the right to do so remain low, or will it achieve a tipping point so that it suddenly really does represent a widespread, socially transformative phenomenon?

[trilingual]

From a lifestyle standpoint, I don't think much will change, in Canada or the U.S., just because marriage becomes legalized. Even now you have people who want to be in the midst of a "gay lifestyle," and choose to live in high density gay areas like WeHo, the Castro, or Chelsea, and then you have the more assimilationist types whose ideal in life is to settle down in the 'burbs in a nice house with a yard and a white picket fence and have a couple of cute kids. There's nothing the matter with either choice; there's room in the gay community for many lifestyles, and I'm sure that will continue. Whichever our choice, we'll continue to be unique and fabulous, because we'll always be a minority and "different," and that's what forces us to think about who we are and how we want to live our lives in a way straight people rarely have to.

 

As for Woodlawn's last post, I think it's a bit cold! People marry for reasons other than legal or tax benefits, not that those are unimportant. It's a commitment of the partners to each other, and it's a reflection of the depth of the feelings of the partners and the importance of the relationship to each other. In other words, getting married is an expression of love. It's also the way people formally establish themselves as a couple in our society, and invoke the support of their family, friends and society for their relationship. For the religious, it's also the opportunity to call for G-d's blessing of their relationship.

[woodlawn]

>From a lifestyle standpoint, I don't think much will change,

>in Canada or the U.S., just because marriage becomes

>legalized. Even now you have people who want to be in the

>midst of a "gay lifestyle," and choose to live in high density

>gay areas

 

Actually, another recent Times article explained that not long after Chicago's government officially named their gay neighborhood "Boystown," the character of the neighborhood is changing with an influx of straight married couples, with gay-themed stores being replaced by stores that carry children's clothing, and with the police receiving many complaints from the increasing number of straight families about the noise made by gay bars.

 

Meanwhile, the article relates, the conservative suburb of Wheaton is seeing gay couples in committed relationships buy homes in its neighborhoods and adopt the lifestyle of that community.

 

I think Mr. Lopez's comment speaks to the issue of whether it makes any sense for gays to live in a separate section of a city if and when the time comes that there is no longer any legal or social obstacle to their assimilation in society. To look at it a bit more broadly, he may have been saying that a lot of the behavior that some people call "gay culture" developed in response to discrimination against gays and that in the absence of such discrimination "gay culture" is no more than an anachronism. Interesting.

 

>As for Woodlawn's last post, I think it's a bit cold! People

>marry for reasons other than legal or tax benefits, not that

>those are unimportant. It's a commitment of the partners to

>each other, and it's a reflection of the depth of the feelings

>of the partners and the importance of the relationship to each

>other. In other words, getting married is an expression of

>love.

 

I thought that's exactly what I was saying. If a gay couple in Canada does NOT want their relationship to be of the same nature as a straight marriage then there is little reason for them to marry, since they can have a common law relationship that confers upon them the same legal rights but does not imply the same kind of commmitment. It only makes sense for them to marry if they want the same sort of public expression of commitment to each other that is embodied in the traditional concept of marriage.

[Trixie]

RE: Ghettoes

 

Almost everyone prefers to live within a group of like-minded people. It doesn't matter if they're gay, chinese, white, black, poor, whatever. If you want to look a it another way, the suburbs are a "White ghetto." Or, perhaps a "certain economic level" ghetto, which seems to unify people more than actual racial or sexual-preference attributes. Blacks and hispanics (and gays) are much easier to swallow if the head(s) of the household are earning more than 80,000 a year.

It's the money that's earning gay folk more respect, like any other group. As long as the money comes from a socially-sanctioned source, such as insurance sales or dot.com start-ups.

La Trix

[bluenix]

RE: Ghettoes

 

>Almost everyone prefers to live within a group of like-minded

>people. It doesn't matter if they're gay, chinese, white,

>black, poor, whatever. If you want to look a it another way,

>the suburbs are a "White ghetto." Or, perhaps a "certain

>economic level" ghetto, which seems to unify people more than

>actual racial or sexual-preference attributes. Blacks and

>hispanics (and gays) are much easier to swallow if the head(s)

>of the household are earning more than 80,000 a year.

>It's the money that's earning gay folk more respect, like any

>other group. As long as the money comes from a

>socially-sanctioned source, such as insurance sales or dot.com

>start-ups.

> La Trix

 

The marriage thing is of no interest to me, but I happened to read your comment and am reminded of a Joan Didion essay from years ago.

 

She recalled staying at the Royal Hawaiian on Waikiki Beach. Guests could sit in a special area on the beach, rope and stanchioned to keep the riffraff out. But as she sat there reading her newspaper it hit her that the barrier wasn't to keep the wrong sort out, it was to keep the right sort in. Near-nakedness is a great equalizer; the "exclusive" area allowed the rich and well heeled to recognize each other.

 

Still cracks me up.

[Luv2play]

There is a misconception that common law marriage confers virtually the same rights as a regular marriage but this is not true. Common law marriage, to be recognized, has a requirement that a couple live together in a jusisdiction for a stipulated amount of time (eg. three years). This effectively prevents unions between people of different nationalities, as it did in my own case many years ago when I fell in love with a man overseas.

 

We first lived together for three years overseas and then lived together in Canada for a little over a year but it was just too difficult as he could not get a job, he had no health coverage in Canada's public health scheme, he couldn't do many things that he could have had we been married. Finally, he left for his home country where he could carry on a normal life with a good job (which he had left to come live with me).

 

I try not to be bitter, but my generation lost out on a lot and we fought for the rights which younger gays can now take for granted. Foremost, the message is gays should NOT be required by society to accept a second-class citizenship just because they want to live with a member of the same sex. In Canada we have now achieved this (almost) and I hope the US does too.

[Mikeyz7]

News from the CBC - June 28, 2005

 

"The Liberals' controversial same-sex marriage legislation has passed final reading the House of Commons, sailing through with a vote of 158 for and 133 against.

Supported by most members of the Liberals, the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP, the legislation passed easily, making Canada only the third country in the world, after the Netherlands and Belgium, to officially recognize same-sex unions. "

 

This statement may be jumping the gun a bit since the legislation still has to pass the Senate but that is not a question of "if" but "when".

[Juan Vancouver]

Oh, Canada!

 

You just have to love these canucks!

 

I wholeheartedly do.

[+ deej]

RE: Oh, Canada!

 

Some of those Venezuelan canucks are pretty lovable too.

[Steven_Draker]

"... making Canada only the third country in the world, after the Netherlands and Belgium, to officially recognize same-sex unions."

 

This reminds me that in several European countries like Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, etc. exist the [a href=http://www.bambooweb.com/articles/c/i/Civil_union.html]Civil Unions[/a]. They provide most of the rights and responsibilities of same-sex marriage, but use a different name for the arrangement.

 

Steven Draker ~

[Yeswell]

As a Canadian, I'm very glad the bill was passed, although as I live in Vancouver I've had the right to marry for over a year. I think it's good that it's national now and I'm proud of my country. I don't want to get married though--what I've always wanted is the right not to get married: I wanted it to be my choice and now it is. Not being allowed to get married means that gays are second-class citizens, as does being allowed to have civil unions rather than marriages, as in the countries Steven Draker mentions. Now perhaps the U.S. will catch up.

[+ deej]

>Civil

>Unions. They provide most of the rights and

>responsibilities of same-sex marriage, but use a different

>name for the arrangement.

 

Right. You're probably less aware of the stygma in the US on "separate but equal". There was a time (not so long ago) in this country when we had restrooms for "men", "women", and "coloreds".

 

Fortunately it didn't last very long, but the stygma is still there. Anything less than full marriage rights is seen by some as "almost equal", or "separate, but equal" and is unpopular.

[taylorky]

>I try not to be bitter, but my generation lost out on a lot

>and we fought for the rights which younger gays can now take

>for granted.

 

 

 

 

i agree....maybe we don't show it,but we do appreciate the sacrifices and pain y'all suffered to bring us where we are today....so even though it might not seem like much in payment...thank you.

[Guest ReturnOfS]

They have gay marriage in Canada......hmmmmmm...

 

WHy do I live in the USA again?

 

 

>For those interested in the topic of gay marriage, today's

>New York Times has an excellent article describing the

>reactions of Canada's gay community to the right they have so

>recently won.

>

>Interestingly, the various reactions mirror the debate on this

>board between those who see the right to marry as confirming

>the mainstream status of gays in society, and those who are

>concerned that it will hasten the day when a unique "gay

>lifestyle" is no more than a relic of a bygone era as the

>"hippie lifestyle" is today.

>

[uwsman2]

You have misunderstood what is going on in Canada. These new marriages for same-sex couples (available since mid-2003 in some provinces are NOT "common law marriages" as you are using the term.

The point is that in Canada the definition of marriage is a matter of common law, not statute, but the formality of getting married is statutory, under provincial law. In fact, the measure passed by the lower house of the Parliament earlier this week will establish, for the first time in Canada, a federal statutory definition of marriage.

Their system is set up differently from ours.

They have also recognized unmarried opposite-sex couples as having a variety of rights, but it is not the equivalent of our notion of "common law marriage," which still exists (solely for opposite-sex couples) in a handful of states.

[uwsman2]

This report is both premature and possibly wrong in terms of "who goes third."

The measure still needs to pass the Canadian Senate and receive "royal assent" through the Governor-General.

Meanwhile, yesterday the Spanish parliament gave final approval to their marriage bill and according to an Associated Press report today it is now law. So, unless the AP has that wrong, Spain is the third country in the world to have same-sex marriage, and Canada will be fourth.

[Yeswell]

It's true that the marriage bill isn't law yet, but senate approval and royal assent are a foregone conclusion--the only test was the House of Commons. And in any case same-sex marriage was already legal in 7 of the 10 provinces. Spain is more of a surprise than Canada or Belgium or the Netherlands, of course, so the Spanish have my hearty congratulations. I hope the States will make it into the first 100.