There's one very
encouraging thing about the uproar in Parliament over gay marriage on
Tuesday. It shows Canadian democracy is not dead. For a while there
we weren't sure.
MPs, especially
Liberal MPs in Ontario, are being yanked back and forth between their
caucus whip on one side, and a furiously aroused minority of
conservative voters back home. Angry minorities terrify elected
politicians, and it's beginning to dawn on them that there are a lot
more angry conservatives than angry gays.
So many Liberals
have deserted the government position on gay marriage that a scant
three votes the other way would have turned it. But this was only a
skirmish set up by the opposition. The real battle is yet to be
fought, and probably during an election. It's now impossible to
predict which side will prevail.
The one certainty
is that the issue cannot go away.
Nor should it.
Marriage creates and binds families, and families create society.
Social decisions are collective, by definition. So too is the meaning
of words. Words mean what most people take them to mean.
So when some judge
decides that the word "marriage" can mean man-and-man as
much as it means woman-and-man, he might as well say that because
ducks swim they are legally fish. If judges or politicians start
pretending that words mean what they don't, the laws they impose will
not work.
In fact, this
whole argument is about meaning, not about rights. A reader named Ian
wrote me last week, "I fail to see how, if John and Peter want
to incorporate themselves in a publicly recognized union by which one
can inherit the other's worldly goods, that will interfere with the
freedom of Michael and Mary to do the same thing. And if 51 per cent
of the population oppose it and deny it legal recognition,
'democracy' has triumphed at the expense of freedom."
I don't know if
Ian is trying to be clever or is merely misinformed, but John and
Peter have always been free legally to will each other their
property. Legally they can bestow it on their pet cat, and always could.
What's more, since
1995 John and Peter have won full spousal benefits from the public
purse. That too is a done deal. We are no longer talking about benefits.
What's being
decided now (this time by Parliament) is whether their unions will be
called "marriages." That's all. The bill is one page.
As ever, we hear
the siren call for "equality." If ordinary marriages get to
be called that, why not unions of homosexuals? Are they less somehow
less valid?
In short, the
question is now one of social prestige. When Michael and Mary go out
with their squabbling brood and say "We're married," it
conveys something respectable to everyone who hears it. What we are
now being asked (or told) to accept is that when John and Peter show
up and say they're "married" too, that's equally respectable.
Well, is it? The
only way to find out is to ask the public. Put it to a referendum.
Oh no, say the Ian
MacDougalls of this world, that would be the "tyranny of the
majority." It would be unfair.
Rubbish. If
minorities want a public concession, they should ask the public's permission.
In a 1999 case
which nobody paid much attention to (Law versus Canada), the Supreme
Court ruled that a person's minority rights are violated if he or she
feels marginalized, ignored and devalued.
In other words,
the majority is to be tyrannized by the hurt feelings of
minorities--or at least of those minorities whose behavior the courts
choose to protect from criticism.
Judgments like Law
v. Canada are so arbitrary, fuzzy and open-ended you begin to suspect
that these judges are not just out of control, you wonder if they
live on the same planet as the rest of us.
- Link Byfield
Link Byfield is
chairman of the Edmonton-based Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy.
"Just
Between Us" is a feature service of the Citizens Centre for
Freedom and Democracy. The purpose of the Citizens Centre is to
improve the quality of life for all Canadians by promoting policies
that foster individual initiative and personal responsibility.
