It’s Pride Week

Thanks to Benjamin Geiger for the image!

This is Toronto’s Pride Week (or Pride Fortnight, June 6 – 30?) Ah, it’s officially June 19 -28. The festivities will be “hotting up” as we approach the weekend blow-out, when part of Church Street is  closed to become a pedestrian mall and celebration space. There’s a Dyke Parade (Dyke Hike?) and a main parade, in which the Mayor and various Members of Parliament or Members of Provincial Parliament ride.

We’re also having a strike by city workers. The pools are closed and garbage collection is cancelled. But Pride Week is going on, aside from cancelling a flag raising — no one to operate the flagpole, I suppose. The organizers will pay up to $20,000 to have private firms collect their litter.

Events include a 5km run or walk, the Pride & Remembrance Run, which raises money for worthy, gay-friendly causes, such as the hospice Casey House. Of course, some people will be running in costume. The run is on Saturday the 27th at 10 a.m., with refreshments afterwards.

Last Saturday there was an inclusive shabbat service held by Shir Libenyu congregation. Remember when “inclusive” was LGBT? That stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transsexual.” Well, now it’s LBGTTIQQ for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual,Transgender,* Intersex, Queer, & Questioning.” Free childcare is available during services.

*Some people say, “Two-spirited.”

I expect that some of the many out-of-town visitors will use their trip as a chance to get legally married.

Gay marriage—why the opposition?

The blogger at Soob says:

Early last month my home state, Vermont, became the first state to legalize gay marriage via statute….

…never have I met a coherent argument against gay marriage that didn’t include either religious prejudice or blatantly subjective bias. No argument has ever convinced me that, on the whole, the recognition of gay marriage is an inherent danger to me, my fellow citizens (beyond their selective and imaginative discomfort) or my society. Now, a decade after legalized civil unions and a month after legalized gay marriage, I’ve yet to see even circumstantial evidence here in my state to support the cause of those in opposition, much less anything strictly empirical.

Song: Defenders of Marriage

Roy Zimmerman recommends this rendition of his song by his fans Joan Manners and Brett Bayne:

They take the mickey out of religion, the bible, culture, politics, etc. while explaining the absurdity of defenders against gay marriage.

Housewarming

On Saturday night, I picked up MsEditor and we went to a colleague’s housewarming party. Our friends moved into the neighbourhood almost a year ago. They’ve been making their house beautiful ever since — and it shows. The back yard was lovely and shady. There was a sushi chef with portable sushi bar set up on the back: “Dr. Sushi – we make house calls.”

Many happy and friendly people showed up and I think a good time was had by all.

More on gay families

Marriage creates an official family. Far from being only about procreation, it settles the legal status of the spouses and answers many questions about property, taxes, inheritance, and who gets to give permission for medical treatment. It is cruel to randomly take a percentage of the population and tell them, “You can never marry, ever, and your relationships can never be acknowledged or regularized. You will always have to sneak around. Some people will think you’re an abomination, no matter how nice you are or how much in love. Tough luck, kid.” And we wonder why gay teens commit suicide.

The fact is that a small percentage of mammals, in forming the complex behaviour of sexuality and mating, seem to prefer their own sex. It isn’t because gay lions are raised with a gay lifestyle by gay parents. Whatever it is, experience or brain wiring or hormones, it’s not unnatural or you wouldn’t find it in Nature. Unusual, yes. Counterproductive, perhaps: although young animals with two parents plus an “aunt” or “uncle” may survive better than those with two parents alone.

Finally, having their legal status settled doesn’t hurt me. Doesn’t hurt my marriage, any more than someone else choosing to be an auto mechanic hurts my choice of career. It’s just busybodying to think so.

Tags: marriage, same-sex marriage, families, equal rights, gay marriage

Gay marriage pro and con

Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars answers an “unanswerable” argument against gay marriage.

If procreation is all that important for marriage these days, with the earth’s population over six billion, then why do we allow marriages between infertile, invirile, or just plain old people? Shouldn’t they have to get the woman pregnant first to prove they can do it? Idjits.

Tags: marriage, same-sex marriage, families, equal rights, gay marriage

"Escape to Canada!"

Bookcrosser PaperbackPal is in a documentary called Escape to Canada.

Mounties get their men: each other

This is cute. Two male Mounties are making history by getting married to each other. According to their workmates, that’s cool.

I love Canada: it’s so sensible.

See also ““Same-sex marriage huff”” and “How heterosexuals destroyed marriage.”

Tags: marriage, same-sex marriage, families, gay marriage, equal rights, RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, historic firsts

How heterosexuals destroyed marriage

Here’s an excellent column: Stephanie Coontz explains how marriage has evolved in the last forty years into something that is equally suited for same-sex couples. In brief, contraception, decoupling marriage from constant child-rearing, and the ideal of a high-companionship marriage have made it an equal-opportunity relationship.

Stephanie Coontz is the author of Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage.

From the publisher:

Marriage today is held up as a blissful haven of love and friendship, sex and stability. We long for the gold standard, the traditional marriage; but marriage turns out to have a checkered past-the “traditional marriage” was evanescent. This real look at what people think of as “traditional” finally explains why so many married people are so unsatisfied.

In this groundbreaking book, award-winning historian Stephanie Coontz takes us on an eye- opening journey from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the sexual torments of Victorian lovers to the current debates over the meaning and future of marriage. She provides the definitive story of marriage’s evolution from the arranged unions common since the dawn of civilization into the intimate, sexually fulfilling but volatile relationships of today.

For most of our history, marriage was not a relationship based on mutual love between a breadwinning husband and an at-home wife, but an institution devoted to acquiring wealth, power, and property. Picking a mate on the basis of something as irrational as love would have been considered absurd. Only in the nineteenth century did marriage move to the center of people’s emotional lives, when the wife became the “angel of the home” and the husband the “provider.” Yet these Victorian ideals contain the seeds of today’s marriage crisis. As people began to expect romance and intimacy in their marriages, their unions became more fragile. The postwar era of the 1950s ushered in a brief “Golden Age” of marriage—the Ozzie and Harriet years—but the same advances in birth control, increased individual autonomy, and women’s equality that made marriage more satisfying than it had been in the past also undermined its stability.

Marriage has changed more in the last thirty years than in the previous five thousand, and few of the old “rules” for marriage still apply. In the courts, the op-ed pieces, and at the dinner table, battles rage over what marriage means, why people do it, and who can do it. Marriage, a History is the one book you need to understand not only the vicissitudes of modern marriage but also gay marriage, “living together” and divorce. Stephanie Coontz shatters dozens of myths about the past and future of married life and shows us why marriage, though more fragile today, can be more rewarding than ever before.

See also “Same-sex marriage huff” and “Mounties get their men”.

Same-sex marriage huff

There’s a certain amount of huffing and puffing in Canada’s Parliament these days. One of our Liberal members of Parliament, Pat O’Brien, has resigned from the Liberal Party to sit as an independent, because he doesn’t want to vote for their bill to legalize same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court advised the government a couple of years ago that it would be discriminatory to forbid it and they should mend the law by allowing a civil marriage between two consenting adults.

The point to marriage is that it clarifies a whole whack of legal issues, such as who is your next of kin and who can consent to medical treatment for you, as well as a social benefit of having an acknowledged relationship.

Several points to note:

• The provincial Supreme Courts in several provinces and one territory have already ruled that it’s illegal to discriminate, so same-sex marriage is legal in most of Canada. And I believe that if you marry legally in one country, another country has no jurisdiction to say that they didn’t like how it was done so it doesn’t count.
• This bill states that it covers civil marriage only: religious groups will continue to be free to refuse to marry any couple.
• If the bill is defeated or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is over-ridden to forbid same-sex marriage, the law will be challenged and overturned.
• At that point people would be free to sue religious groups to make them perform same-sex marriages, too.
• So it’s all optics on the part of the Conservative party (the amalgamated Alliance/Reform/formerly Progressive Conservative parties).

Now, let’s see if I can paste the bill:

Bill C-38: An Act respecting certain aspects of legal capacity for marriage for civil purposes

WHEREAS the Parliament of Canada is committed to upholding the Constitution of Canada, and section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees that every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination;

WHEREAS the courts in a majority of the provinces and in one territory have recognized that the right to equality without discrimination requires that couples of the same sex and couples of the opposite sex have equal access to marriage for civil purposes;

WHEREAS the Supreme Court of Canada has recognized that many Canadian couples of the same sex have married in reliance on those court decisions;

WHEREAS only equal access to marriage for civil purposes would respect the right of couples of the same sex to equality without discrimination, and civil union, as an institution other than marriage, would not offer them that equal access and would violate their human dignity, in breach of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms;

WHEREAS the Supreme Court of Canada has determined that the Parliament of Canada has legislative jurisdiction over marriage but does not have the jurisdiction to establish an institution other than marriage for couples of the same sex;

WHEREAS everyone has the freedom of conscience and religion under section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms;

WHEREAS nothing in this Act affects the guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion and, in particular, the freedom of members of religious groups to hold and declare their religious beliefs and the freedom of officials of religious groups to refuse to perform marriages that are not in accordance with their religious beliefs;

WHEREAS, in light of those considerations, the Parliament of Canada’s commitment to uphold the right to equality without discrimination precludes the use of section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to deny the right of couples of the same sex to equal access to marriage for civil purposes;

WHEREAS marriage is a fundamental institution in Canadian society and the Parliament of Canada has a responsibility to support that institution because it strengthens commitment in relationships and represents the foundation of family life for many Canadians;

AND WHEREAS, in order to reflect values of tolerance, respect and equality consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, access to marriage for civil purposes should be extended by legislation to couples of the same sex;

NOW, THEREFORE, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:

1. This Act may be cited as the Civil Marriage Act.

2. Marriage, for civil purposes, is the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others.

3. It is recognized that officials of religious groups are free to refuse to perform marriages that are not in accordance with their religious beliefs.

4. For greater certainty, a marriage is not void or voidable by reason only that the spouses are of the same sex.

Let’s get this straight: It doesn’t hurt my marriage if other people get married. I think it discredits marriage in the U.S. when polygamists marry their pre-pubescent step-grandmothers. And if you insist that marriage is for procreation, then post-menopausal women or anyone who’s mutually infertile should’t be allowed to get married. In fact, women should get pregnant first to prove that they’re eligible.

See also “Mounties get their men” and “How heterosexuals destroyed marriage.”