Culture Vulture

Gay Marriage: It's A Family Affair

The latest newsflash from Sarsville is that same-sex couples now have the right to marry in Ontario. Finally, some good news! I'm almost feeling proud to be a Canadian, again. Now that our government has finally achieved something truly progressive and humane, maybe Time Magazine will stop putting stories about how Canada has disappeared from the face of the earth on its cover. Hell, Canadians were so open-minded and progressive this past week, we were practically Swedish!
Last week the Ontario Court of Appeals finally ruled that the Canadian law regarding traditional marriage is unconstitutional. According to the 61-page report from the appeal that was quoted in the Toronto Star, the ruling claimed that "The existing common-law definition of marriage violates the couple's equality rights on the basis of sexual orientation under the Charter. Exclusion perpetuates the view that same-sex relationships are less worthy of recognition than opposite-sex relationships." Hysterical right-wingers take note: nowhere does it say there that same-sex marriages are MORE worthy. Equality is all that is being demanded here.
The Appeal Court also declared Ottawa's definition of marriage invalid and demanded it be immediately changed to refer to "two persons" instead of "one man and one woman." Marriage licenses will now read spouse and partner rather than man and woman. Finally, marriage is being taken out of its spooky religious context and being named for what it really is - a contract between two people. Marriage is, after all, a calculated act that is about building a life together. It is not something that is necessarily ordained by God.
Wisdom, as we all know, often comes out of the mouths of babes. I was quite touched by Robbie Kemper, the 11-year-old son of lesbian couple Joyce Barnett and Alison Kemper, whose comment about why this was such a positive development: "I knew that nobody could say I didn't have a family, Canada has finally figured out it's unfair to deny this to anybody." According to the Toronto Star, his parents picked up a license to marry as soon a they heard the good news.
It is time that we finally acknowledged that this decision actually supports family values, rather than negates them. There are hundreds of thousands of Robbies in this country that feel like outsiders or "denied" because of a prevailing attitude that same-sex partnerships are somehow wrong. The impact of the isolation, humiliation and self-esteem problems that these children must suffer as a result of recriminating attitudes has probably done real harm. For once, we are passing a law that actually can be said to be "good for the children." Finally children are not going to be responsible for the decisions or sexual preferences of their parents. Children also will now probably be financially protected, in the same ways that children with heterosexual parents are, in the event that the marriage splits up. With the advent of this groundbreaking ruling, we have not only granted millions of homosexual and lesbian Canadians more rights, we have also handed their children a charter.
This ruling is a personal victory for seven same-sex couples defending a lower court decision that said Canadian law violated their charter rights by preventing them tying the knot. Ottawa tried to overthrow that ruling, arguing that marriage is a universal concept based on the union of a man and woman.
As a result of this ruling, gay couple Michael Leshner and Michael Stark married in Toronto in a quick civil ceremony just hours after the ruling was announced last Wednesday. The problem is that the marriage could still be stopped at the federal level, in an appeal to the Supreme Court.
In the olden days, it would have been the Church that defines a family. Now it looks like we are leaving it up to the government. In the meantime, thousands of homosexuals and lesbians have been living in a state that mimics wedded bliss without the formal recognition and tax breaks.
About 12 weeks from now, we will see if the federal government feels it has a right to tell us who we can marry by overruling this appeal - a pronouncement that many feel is an imposition on everybody's right to have or be in a family.

Publication Date: 2003-06-22
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2859