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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
Its new law legalizing gay marriage may not lead to a stampede to the altar -- but it highlights how much Canadians dislike self-righteous bigotry.
Jun 30, 2005 | "There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation," Pierre Trudeau, then Canada's justice minister, proclaimed to the TV cameras in 1967, after introducing a bill to decriminalize private homosexual acts. The governing philosophies of Canada can often be found in the quips of Trudeau, the flamboyant and scholarly Liberal prime minister who led the country almost continuously from 1968 to 1984. On Tuesday, when it passed Bill C-38, which will federally sanction same-sex marriages, a Liberal party that is a battered remnant of Trudeau's powerful machine showed that it still has enough power to define what it means to be Canadian. As soon as the Senate rubber-stamps the law in July, there will be no place for the state in the wedding plans of the nation, either.
Trudeau would have achieved this breakthrough by leading from the front, forcefully knocking down what he called "totems and taboos" to "bring the laws of the land up to contemporary society." By contrast, the current Liberal government, led by Paul Martin, is in the minority and barely survived a confidence vote just six weeks ago. It is leading this charge from the back of the pack, enacting legislation to catch up with a Supreme Court decision in December that validated gay marriages nationwide by ruling that the federal government could change its definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The court itself acknowledged that it was catching up, stating that the recognition of same-sex marriage in several Canadian jurisdictions and two countries, Belgium and the Netherlands (the court wasn't then aware of Spain's similar move on Wednesday), "belies the assertion" that "marriage should be available only to same-sex couples."
Like so many Supreme Court decisions on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border, the ruling and the legislation born from it are not about what they appear to be about. A half-dozen gays and lesbians I spoke with Tuesday expressed little interest in getting married. "I've never had much interest in or respect for the institution of marriage," one of them told me. Another said, "I'm in a long-term committed relationship, but I have no need to have it validated by having it ceremonially and legally branded as a marriage." They said they have attended only a handful of gay marriages and know very few gay couples who are planning to go to the altar (or a civil judge) anytime soon. Their apparent lack of enthusiasm for the new law won't stop the momentum of foreigners who make the trek to Canada to get hitched, but if Canadian gays are not planning to get married in droves, what is all the fuss about?
It's about that very simple but very pesky idea: equality under the law. In 1982, Trudeau's government left a sasquatch-size imprint on the nation when it enacted the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada's version of the U.S. Bill of Rights, which has propelled thousands of legal battles since, including the ones that resulted in Bill C-38. "Whether I want to get married or not doesn't really matter," one lesbian told me. "If the government has an institution and I cannot participate in it, I am a second-class citizen. If I am a full member of society, I must have the choice. I am proud of my government for recognizing that. I only wish we had been first."
One gay man thinks the new law's biggest impact will be on gay men's relationships: "Since gay relationships are recognized all the way up to the level of marriage, gay men may value their relationships more. I think men of my generation have devalued relationships because their relationships are devalued by society at large."
For those Canadians who oppose the government's sanctioning of same-sex marriages, this issue is not about equality at all. It's about God. The Conservatives, the leading opposition party, muse about whether C-38 will be effective "in terms of protecting religious freedoms." Since the bill does not force clerics to perform same-sex marriages, the Conservatives' position must be code. What they're really saying is that the mere fact that the sacrosanct term "marriage" can be used in the same breath as "homosexual" offends the sensibility of those who believe that God is concerned about whom you sleep with and how. Some people believe he/she is; some people don't; some people don't believe in God at all. At this late date, one would think that God would not and could not enter into the matter, but the Canadian national anthem still contains the line "God keep our land glorious and free," which for many people means that patriotism and piety are one and the same. And we all know whom God speaks directly to south of the 49th Parallel.
