Get Used to Gay Marriage

Why is Prime Minister Harper revisiting the question of gay marriage? Probably for the same reason Pierre Trudeau did so with capital punishment 25 years ago. It has to be put behind him, and it will be if the motion fails.

No one I know of wants to force churches to perform gay marriages. Because of that, this issue cannot be treated as a religious one, but a secular one. This vote is about whether or not Canada makes available for a certain group of people the same rights, privileges and duties granted the majority. It's no more complicated than that.

Except that it is. It is because a number of MPs have dragged God into the debate.

This issue isn't an examination of the scriptures. That's for churches to do as they make up their own minds on whether it's appropriate for them to oversee gay marriages. We're talking here about rights accruing or not to Canadian citizens.

I say that the antis are made up of homophobes, who could be handled, and those who believe that the teachings of a church have precedence over the duty of MPs to do what is fair and what is best for the country at large. Let me expand.

That word 'marriage'

Is the opposition because once civil gay marriages are approved, our society will go all to hell? If so, surely we ought to have some evidence of that. And besides, the clear evidence is that any decay in society is better attributed to the breakdown of the traditional marriage.

Is it the use of the word "marriage" that offends? That issue is raised and indeed has been by me. The trouble is, as I see the sides lining up, if the motion was to grant gay people legal status without granting them the term "marriage," that wouldn't change a thing for the anti-gay MPs. It is a tendentious argument at best. I had reservations until I thought of how marriage as an institution has been used for centuries for various purposes. Often marriages are entered into for dynastic or cultural reasons; often enough to notice, it's been used and is being used to gain a convenience, such as coming to and living in Canada. But much more than these things, we must examine the state of marriage itself in Canada.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when marriage was for a lifetime and if you wanted out, too bad. Whatever terrors such an institution brought, especially to women, it could be said that marriage was not just a religious institution, but a very special legal "thing" enforced by governments. As a society, quite apart from religion, we said marriage, once entered into, was a bond unto bondage. That was a bad situation and often created a lifetime of grief, especially for women trapped in violent relationships and with young children to think of. But that was the way it was, largely because of the enormous pressure on politicians by clerics who also did all they could to make Sunday a "nothing" day, even for religious people who did not see Sunday that way and for other people who wanted to take their kids to the ballgame and have a beer and hot dog.

Those were the days when women didn't work or were frowned upon when they did. When they did get divorced, their names went into the newspaper.

In short, until a relatively short time ago, marriage created a legal status which was very difficult to change. My point is simple: there was a time when the word "marriage" conveyed a very special civil meaning because in the eyes of the state and the citizens, marriage was a very special institution. This has changed. My, oh my how it's changed!

Boring old divorce

How many reading this today have been divorced twice (as I have)? How many in your family have been divorced? Would you return for a second to the days where, when your daughter married, she became the property of her partner? How many now would keep women in a violent relationship? Never mind violence, how many would deny people the right to try again to sort out their lives when they find that they have made a mistake?

Clearly, in the eyes of the state, marriage has become an arrangement between two people that can readily be dissolved, especially when you consider the same rights, duties and responsibilities of marriage extend to common law relations. If, then, the word "marriage," in a civil sense, now means a civil contract easy to vitiate, how can we argue that society will lose anything through the use of the term "marriage" by gay couples?

By extension, if we, by common and I think appropriate societal consent, don't regard marriage in a civil sense as more than a flexible legal union, how do we deny gays the same civil privilege?

This is not to say that many don't regard marriage as a lifetime union, for many do. Nor does it deny religions the ability to enforce their rules and it certainly doesn't force them to do anything they don't want to. I don't for a moment say that the nuclear family is a bad thing. Not at all. But it does seem to be somewhat passé in this Canadian society we're in.

'It's a no-brainer'

But it is not the word "marriage" that is the root reason of those opposed to gay marriages and they know it. It's essentially because some people believe that homosexuality is a crime in the eyes of the God they worship. Here is what Warren Booth, who is organizing the rally against gay unions, had to say: "I just don't understand what people don't get. If God says don't do it, you don't do it. For us it's a no-brainer. It's not a grey area, it's black and white. What they're doing is sinful in the eyes of the Lord."

The group he represents, Man and Woman Union, believes that gays and lesbians have the ability to "convert" back. Even if that were true, it's hard to see how this is relevant unless our next step is to force gays and lesbians into psychiatric bondage until they repent of their ways and see the light.

Moreover, whose God are we talking to here? The Catholic God or the God for fundamentalist Christianity? The God of Anglicans -- that branch of Christianity, which, as always, muddles along hoping that God is more forgiving than others allege? Or, perhaps the United Church of Canada's God, who evidently not only approves of gay marriage but who welcomes gay parishioners and even gay ministers? What does Jehovah or Allah think of all this? Do we perhaps deal with Indo-Canadian views of the deity and what His/Her rules are? Or perhaps breakaway Mormons whose God has very "liberal" notions indeed about marriage? So to Mr. Warren Booth and those he represents, and to members of parliament, whose God are we talking about here?

What did Jesus say?

But to ask that question implies some recognition that "a" God should be involved and begs the main question. We are not talking about anyone's God here. We're saying that religions can interpret God and his words but he remains irrelevant to this and any other debate in our parliaments. That will come as a shock to those who think their God has authority over all things, but they should read their own scriptures because, of course, Jesus himself, when the Pharisees tried to trick him, said, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

God's not the issue. He's not even in the game. The issue is simply that parliament seeks to extend basic Canadian civil rights, privileges and duties to a class of society many think should have them. The question as to what someone's God has to say is utterly irrelevant.

The bottom line for Mr. Harper is this: he must hope and, dare I say pray, that the motion is defeated or he will not get rid of this tiresome elephant in the room.

Rafe Mair writes a Monday column for The Tyee. His website is www.rafeonline.com.

Related Tyee stories: Daniel Gawthrop eagerly anticipated his gay wedding; Jodi Shaw wrote about being married to the wrong sex; and Stan Persky accused opponents of same-sex marriage of persecuting gays, plain and simple.