THE POLITICS OF GAY MARRIAGE: Report from Canada

Here are two Canadians news report, the first here suggesting Parliament will reject the Government's draft of a law redefining marriage as "a union of two people, to the exclusion of all others."

The second is more interesting: A major Conservative MP is proposing getting government out of the marriage business altogether. This is another quite likely way gay marriage will lead to the deconstruction of marriage, if courts impose it here: Christian conservatives, libertarian elites, and the left will join together to support the legal abolition of marriage and its replacement by some kind of domestic partnership registery. Of course this is not a necessary consequence of court-ordered gay marriage, just a likely compromise (if efforts to overturn court decisions fail), given the depth and strength of opposition to gay marriage among religious groups with traditional sex codes.

Excerpts below, full story here.

"Conservative Party Leader Peter MacKay called yesterday for the federal government to get out of marriage completely, leaving it only to churches, and said he would seek to rally his caucus to his position.

The idea, once considered extreme, also has some support in the ranks of Liberals and the Canadian Alliance, as MPs opposed to same-sex marriage seek a compromise that will pass muster in the courts.
Outside a meeting of his caucus, Mr. MacKay said the government should simply create a new state institution called something like "registered domestic partnerships" that would be used for all couples, heterosexual or homosexual.

Only churches would perform "marriages," and each church could decide whether to marry same-sex couples. "[The government] would get out of the marriage business altogether," Mr. MacKay said.

He added that the new state-sanctioned institution would have the same legal status as marriage, but would be called something else. "We would call it a union, we would call it a registered domestic partnership.

"There is another description that would have the same status, same legal definition, same level of equality under the law."

Mr. Brison, a Nova Scotia Tory MP who is gay, said he would support same-sex marriage if it came to a vote in the Commons, but he prefers the "registered domestic partnership" that would take the state out of marriage. "I would prefer to see registered domestic partnerships for all Canadians and let churches define marriage."

posted by maggie at 10:28 AM VOTE

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