Canada's gays not lining up to get married

[jamesglewisf]

This in interesting. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/international/americas/31CANA.html?hpWhen David Andrew, a 41-year-old federal government employee, heard that the highest Ontario court had extended marriage rights to same-sex couples two months ago, he broke into a sweat.

"I was dreading the conversation," he said, fearing that his partner would feel jilted when he told him that he did not believe in the institution. "Personally, I saw marriage as a dumbing down of gay relationships. My dread is that soon you will have a complacent bloc of gay and lesbian soccer moms."

When he moved in with David Warren, a 41-year-old software company project officer, he wrote up a set of vows that remains above their bed, seven years later. They promise "a confidant, playmate, partner in crime, biggest fan and protector." But they stop short of monogamy, which is something Mr. Andrew also says he does not believe in.

[jamesglewisf]

"Ambiguity is a good word for the feeling among gays about marriage," said Mitchel Raphael, editor in chief of Fab, a popular gay magazine in Toronto. "I'd be for marriage if I thought gay people would challenge and change the institution and not buy into the traditional meaning of `till death do us part' and monogamy forever. We should be Oscar Wildes and not like everyone else watching the play."

[jamesglewisf]

But the issue also included an essay by Rinaldo Walcott, a sociologist at the University of Toronto, warning that marriage could be an agent of homogenization. "I can already hear folks saying things like: `Why are bathhouses needed? Straights don't have them,' " he wrote. "Will queers now have to live with the heterosexual forms of guilt associated with something called cheating?"

[jamesglewisf]

There you go. First we should challenge whether or not marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

Then you challenge whether marriage is supposed to be monogamous.

Then you challenge whether marriage should be "till death do us part."

They don't want mariage. They want to destroy marriage. They want insurance benefits.

[Stormwind]

This isn't the view of all gay people. This is the view of some. There are heterosexual couples who feel the same way about committment and monogamy- they aren't rushing to the county courthouse either.

Most of the long term gay couples I know want their committed, monogamous, 'til death due us part', relationships recognized as legal unions. And YES, they want it recognized in part for the legal rights that the law gives to heterosexual couples who go through the process for legal unions.

Why shouldn't they have the same tax rights, the same hospital visiting, decision making, insurance, bank account, survivorship, property, etc. rights of every heterosexual couple who has a legal union?

Don't call it a marriage if you prefer. Let marriage be the ceremony or sacrament that religious institutions confer and grant; let the state grant "unions" for legal purposes. The couples themselves decide their own level of committment to each other. You can't legislate committment, you can't even force it with a religious ceremony - it comes from within each person in a relationship.

[jamesglewisf]

The article is not saying that it is the view of all gay people in Canada, it just seems to be the majority based upon the small number of marriages that have occurred.

[Alec]

I could care less what the government does. I'm more concerned about churches recognizing gay marriages.