As for totems and taboos, well, the most vocal opponents of same-sex marriage in the States and Canada seem very hung up on the use of the M-word. They seem truly to believe that God, speaking English, said, "Marriage shall be between a man and a woman." If the supreme being that guides our fate is that worried about the strict construction of a single word -- has that little a grasp of nuance and semantic change -- we have much bigger fish to fry than same-sex marriage. If God is into freezing the meaning of words, then words like Canadian and American must be frozen for all of time too, even though the evidence here on earth is to the contrary.

According to Michael Adams, in "Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values," the definitions of what it means to be a Canadian or an American, once quite similar, are now diverging steadily, most strikingly where the place of God in society is concerned. According to a 2002 Pew Research Center poll cited by Adams, "religion was found to be important to 59 percent of Americans -- the highest proportion in all the developed nations surveyed -- and to only 30 percent of Canadians, a rate similar to that found in Great Britain and Italy." The good money is not on the United States becoming the fifth country to sanction same-sex marriage at the national level.

One might expect that since the Liberal Party that rules Canada is in the minority and just barely got the law enacted, Canadians are strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. Indeed, there is a vocal opposition, but polls cited by Adams show the public strongly supporting it (except among those over 55), and by a larger percentage than in the United States. The Conservative Party, which started as a regional party that catered to Canadian Westerners' alienation from the Eastern establishment, has strived mightily to make itself a national party, and it could be if it were located in the United States, because many of its members espouse the kind of social conservatism that's in vogue there. To become a national party in Canada, though, the Conservatives must hide this fact. But just when it looks like they've managed to do so, as if in a reverse Clintonian bimbo eruption, some member of Parliament from a God-fearing locale pipes up about moral depravity of one kind or another. At that point, Canadians cannot find a pole long enough to distance themselves from this bigoted brand of conservatism.

When you exist in the shadow of the United States, Trudeau said, "it is like sleeping with an elephant." If you fear you will be crushed by the moral and cultural weight of your near neighbor, you tend to stick together. So, upstanding though they may be -- what with the Mounties and all that -- most Canadians blanch at preaching to their fellow citizens about their behavior and creating differences that separate needlessly. That's why it's the third country to make it possible for people who wear the label "homosexual" to add the label "married." After all, it's just a word.

One gay man told me on Tuesday morning that he felt good but not ecstatic: "I asked myself when I came into work this morning if I was any different today, and the answer was 'No.' And that's the point. I deserve to be no different from anyone else."

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