Here's my question: Why is it Conservatives think it's reasonable to grant homosexuals all the same rights as marriage but not the actual word? Do you actually think this is moderate? To me, it just looks small minded and petty.
Of course, nobody wants to say it, but this whole debate is still infused with homophobia in Canada. The debate we're not having by focusing on gay marriage is this: How accepted will gays and lesbians be in Canada? We've accorded them most of the rights of equal citizens, but the right in this country (and our neighbours to the south) have decided that "marriage" is the hill they want to die on. Why? The idea that marriage is a sacred tradition is laughable - in the 20th century alone marriage changed dramatically, and it's bound to change further in the 21st. No, the Conservatives fight this fight for the same reason they've fought every measure of equality - they don't believe gays and lesbians should have an equal place in Canada.
Now, if you're a pro-gay marriage Conservative, then I think your heart is in the right place, but your mind is asleep. All the talk of "small government" or "cleaning up corruption" is meaningless if your party supports denying citizens of this country their equal rights. Which the Conservative Party does. How would you react to any other charter right being treated separately? What if we asked gays and lesbians to vote in separate polls? Use separate washrooms? Go to different schools? (How many kids would come out in high school then?)
As it happens, today is Martin Luther King Day. We can see what happened in the US under a system where citizens were nominally equal but legally separate. The result was Jim Crow, and for Blacks it was as bad as any dictatorship the Americas have seen in the 20th Century. Compared to the numbers of blacks who just disappeared in the south, Pinochet was a piker.
I don't believe that things would ever get that bad in Canada, but they could still get pretty bad. What happens when Alberta decides that a partner in a "marriage" can adopt a child, but not a "civil union"? How about health care? Insurance? Mortgage payments? Divorce settlements? You might say that these things will be fought in the courts, but this is why Jim Crow is relevant - the NAACP fought segregation through the courts, and it took decades. The wheels of justice grind slow, as they will now. And while these useless, petty, homophobic battles are being fought in the courts, the only thing the Conservatives will manage to do is ruin the lives of a few gay people.
UPDATE: Mike at Rational Reasons has more on the "sacred" institution of marriage. My favourite:
The early Christian Church was more interested in celibacy as a sacrament, and often simply recognized pre-existing civil laws. For instance, same sex marriage was recognized in ancient Rome and this extended into the Christian period... There is even evidence for Church-sanctioned same sex unions in ancient times, including a liturgy (see Same-sex Unions in Premodern Europe, Villard Press, 1994).
3 comments:
Great post John.
Indeed, on this day, we need to remember that separate but equal is not equal.
I find, of course, that many social Conservatives who oppose gay marriage are simply anti-gay. Some genuinely think they are guarding a scared insittution. Unfortunately, that institution has never been what they think it is, save the last 100 years or so. Marriage has always been about property and not about love or children, except in the sense that children inherit property. This is from Greek and Roman times. Even the Catholic Church did not enter into the marriage business until 1100 AD or thereabouts. Romantic ideas of marriage did not come about until the 18th century.
Romantic marriage of one man and one woman for the purposes of procreation does not stand up to historical scrutiny.
I posted on this last spring, check it out:
http://rationalreasons.blogspot.com/2005/05/brief-history-of-marriage.html
In a way, by making 'marriage' the battle ground, the Religious Reich has given the Rainbow Warriors exactly what we want. A venue which demonstrates to the world precisely how petty these bigots are, that they will put this much energy into maintaining a certain definition of a certain word in advancement of their agenda of institutionalized discrimination, while all around them real people with real love relationships are making real marriages. They should just stick to pretending that all fags are disease-carrying pedophiles in a conspiracy to sodomize Amerikkka's children; at least there's still a chance destroying a few lives through demonization. They have become so heavily involved in the battle to preserve their 'sacred traditions' that they cannot even see that their war against equality has been lost.
... it's interesting, isn't it?
All these high'n'mighty Christian Soldiers, but all they're really trying to do is retain some status in the 'pecking order of sinners'.
"Well, I may have had premarital sex, but at LEAST I never had an abortion."
Or, "Well, I MAY have coveted my neighbours wife (and even had sex with her ... many times), but at LEAST I'm not Queer."
Really, I think this is mostly about being 'not as bad' as the next person. And how sad is that?
Marriage is a legal contract.
Nothing more. Unfortunately we've allowed the religious organizations to take over some of that bureaucratic paperwork, thus the 'loving couple' don't have to have 2 ceremonies. One shot, all done.
In many other places - Russia is the one that comes to mind, but many european countries - everyone has to have a 'civil ceremony' and get the legalities taken care of.
Then, if they want (and if they're satisfied they won't burst into flames walking in the door) they can have a church ceremony -- but it's just the symbolic gesture that it SHOULD be.
Perhaps we should just let the bureaucrats deal with the bureaucracy, the churches deal with the 'blessing'? Just to clarify the fact that 'marriage' isn't a sacrament of government?
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