Bloomberg reports:
Canada's Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can proceed with a plan to legalize same-sex marriage, saying the rights of gays and lesbians to formalize their bonds is protected by the constitution.``Canada is a pluralistic society,'' the Supreme Court said in the ruling, which was released in Ottawa. ``Marriage from the perspective of the state is a civil institution.''...
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said religious officials can't be forced to perform same-sex marriages, as their beliefs also are protected by Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This ruling is not the sort that could take place in the US because in the US, the legislature and executive branch cannot ask the Supreme Court to deliver an opinion on the constitutionality of a law before it is passed. In Canada, they can, and in this case former Prime Minister Jean Chretien asked the court to rule on whether a law allowing gay marriages full equality with conventional marriages would be constitutional before they voted on it. The court ruled that it would be. This does not guarantee that the law will pass, however, and proponents of the bill think it will be very close.
I hope the bill passes, obviously, and not merely because I support gay marriage. I want it to pass so that all of the ridiculous arguments we hear about how gay marriage will destroy marriage and undermine society will be forever disproven. You know what will change for the millions of Canadians in conventional marriages if this law is adopted? Absolutely nothing. They will go on precisely the same as they did before. People will still get married, parents will still love their children, and everything will remain the same. Rush Limbaugh's fourth marriage will be every bit as sacred as his first, second and third ones were, and marriages in those morally upstanding red states will continue to split up 50% more often than marriages in those godless pagan blue states. That will put the lie to the absurd notion that being against gay marriage has something to do with "protecting" the "sanctity of marriage".
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Obviously Canada will slide into the ocean when this passes. This should be seen as a warning to all.
Ed, Did you get red and blue backwards in your post???
Denmark has had gay marriage since 1989. In 1989 South Carolina didn't even have legal interracial marriage yet. The fact that society doesn't crumble with gay marriage was proven long, long ago but that doesn't matter. We're a good 20 years in my estimate before we see something like that happen here.
bill-
Yep, I sure did. Thanks!
Denmark has had gay marriage since 1989. In 1989 South Carolina didn't even have legal interracial marriage yet.
Not quite. Interracial marriage has been legal in every state since 1967, when in the Loving v. Virginia case the Supreme Court struck down all miscegenations laws as unconstitutional. That case really is a problem for those who make the argument that whatever the state of the law was in the states at the time of the Constitution is evidence of the original meaning of the Constitution and therefore should decide such cases today. Miscegenation laws go back to at least 1661 in the US and many states had laws against interracial marriage at the time of the founding. As late as the 1950s, half of the states still had such laws. By 1967, that was down to 16 and the Supreme Court did away with all of them in the Loving decision. Believe it or not, this couple went to Washington DC to get married because it was illegal in their home state of Virginia, and when they got back home they were arrested for it. And at the trial the judge gave them the option of either spending one year in jail, or moving out of the state. And this was only 37 years ago, for crying out loud. Such absolute barbarism, and yet how could my pet troll, for instance, who says that the fact that sodomy was illegal in many states at the time of the founding and therefore the Lawrence decision was wrong, think that Loving was decided correctly? Perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps he would even go so far as to be for miscegenation laws. That would be consistent, of course, but barbaric.
By the way, it appears that the Loving decision was unanimous. On Findlaw, I can only find the opinion written by Chief Justice Warren and a very brief concurring opinion by Justice Stewart noting that any state law that made a determination of criminality solely a matter of race would be unconstitutional. Do any of my attorney readers know if there were any dissenting opinions in the case? If so, I'd love to read them.
I have to say as happy as I am with today's decision, I have still spent most of the day alternating between laughing out loud, and shaking my head in embarassment listening to people call in the local talk radio stations. As much as we Canadians love to feel smug and superior to our southern ex-allies, on days like this I'm reminded that stupidity and ignorance are universal. All I've heard all day are the same tired arguements. From "majority rule", to "moral decay". And then there are the truly bizarre. like "well if we let the gays marry, then what's to stop brothers from marrying their sisters" and "why are we wasting all this time worrying about the gays when there are terrorists to fight?", I'm still trying to figure that last one out considering this was a supreme court ruling. I guess I just don't understand how people can be so passionately hateful about something that won't affect their lives one bit
As a currently married Canadian I can say categorically that whether gays can legally wed or not has not the slightest impact either way on my vows, which are between the misses and me.
Dave, I hope you mean the "missus," unless Canada is about legalize polygamy :)
LOM: "Ed, Did you get red and blue backwards in your post???"
Ed: "Bill, Yep, I sure did. Thanks!"
Whew! For a minute there, I thought I was a pagan. B
Actually the South Carolina ban against interracial marriage wasn't removed until 1998. It wasn't enforced, of course, and couldn't have been since the Lovings case, but I'm just illustrating the point of the snail pace our country travels with social issues like these. In my opinion, Canada having perfectly normal marriage rates after allowing homosexual marriage won't have any effect on the issue in America, just as the success in western europe has had no effect.
Ed: There was no dissent in Loving.
Dave, I hope you mean the "missus," unless Canada is about legalize polygamy
About to? You mean it ain't legal now?? Donna, Wendy, Suzanne and Lisa...you all got to go. Catherine, you can stay.
There were no dissents in Loving, and, quite frankly, from what I can tell Loving was the first case that got the 14th amendment's equal protection clause right. Each person was to receive equal protection of the laws. They didn't quite get it right in Brown vs. Board of Education. Almost, but not quite.
The case from the Supreme Court of Canada is interesting, but it's a bit overshadowed by developments. The most interesting case was the opinion out of Ontario a couple of years ago--which the MA Supreme Judicial Court noted in the Goodridge case a little over a year ago.
I'm a proud Canadian today. Of course, I live in th backward province of Alberta, but it looks like we'll be dragged along with the rest of the country into the 21st century. We can hope that the example will help push the US forward, but I really don't understand people who are against equal rights at all, so I won't guess at how they'll react. Makes my head hurt.
I'm a proud Canadian today. Of course, I live in th backward province of Alberta, but it looks like we'll be dragged along with the rest of the country into the 21st century. We can hope that the example will help push the US forward, but I really don't understand people who are against equal rights at all, so I won't guess at how they'll react. Makes my head hurt.
I hear Ralph Klein is thinking of going for a referendum on this issue. Maybe he thinks that way it's least likely to pass.
Please pardon me for getting personal. Fred, my same-sex husband, was in the Summer of 2001 diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in one of his legs--his left leg. That was a rather severe DVT, but he apparently pulled out of it OK. And that, in the Winter of 2003 he was diagnosed with a DVT in his right leg. That was less severe, but he also apparently pulled out of that OK. He was happy to be off of the "blood thinner" pills that he had been on.
A couple of days ago, Fred had a CT scan for an issue that was apparently unrelated to the DVTs. The scan revealed that he was suffering from some minor--thank goodness--clots in his lungs. They don't know where the clots originated from--probably from the last DVT, but the doctors don't know for sure.
Today, after we got the result of the CT scan, we went to the hospital at Lahey Clinic in Burlington MA. He'll get good care there for the next couple of days, and I'm looking forward to seeing him tomorrow, even though it will be in his hospital room. It may be that he'll have to be on the "blood thinner" pills for the rest of his life. We hope not, but it's better than the other thing.
Fred and I have been together for over 26 years--since 30 August 1978--even though we've been "legally" married only since 28 June 2004.
For some of us, these marriage issues are not theoretical. They are very real. Fred and I have had the great good fortune that our relatives on both sides are quite supportive of us. A lot of people have not been so fortunate.