Same sex marriage, again
Feb. 17th, 2005 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garranSo, Stephen Harper is now trying to amend the bill, in, he says, two ways. First, he wants to get rid of the part where gays can marry.
(...but formally acknowledge that it's okay for them to have some separate but equal form of civil union. Why don't this - and the other argument, advanced by many thoughtful people, that governments should retreat entirely to civil unions, leaving the marriage business exclusively to religious authority - seem like a satisfactory solution to me? Mostly, because I think that marriage is, at this point, a secular institution - like Christmas, but much less conflicted about it. Atheists get married all the time, and when you see someone rejecting the institution, it's much more likely to be for its cultural implications than its religious.
Mr. Harper's amendment here, of course, would leave the legal and civil recognitions of marriage in place, and as such would actually restrict those churches as want to from marrying (with authority) homosexual couples, at least as far as I can tell.)
Secondly, he wants,
Which I still don't understand. It sounds suspiciously like people want the "right" not to see a couple in wedding rings kissing on the bus, which to me is pretty difficult to justify.
A while ago, another Conservative (Vic Toews, the opposition justice critic) gave a few examples of what they're apparently thinking of. The first was federal marriage commissioners who don't want to perform same-sex marriages, which I have very little immediate sympathy for; it seems to be that the marriage commissioner's job is to administrate civil marriage policy - to behave as the government's agent, not an autonomous authority on the propriety of a marriage. I don't imagine that, if you're a marriage commissioner and your sister walks in with a fellow you think is incredibly wrong for her, you're allowed to refuse to marry them; similarly if you're Catholic, and asked to marry a divorcee*. A policeman has the right to refuse to enforce a law he believes is immoral, but I'm pretty sure that he exercises that by resigning; as far as I'm aware, the same, here.
(*Unless I'm remembering wrong, and Catholics don't disapprove of remarriage. Someone does.)
After that, he talks about a church that is being sued by a lesbian couple, because it wouldn't rent its building out for their wedding (presumably, they will rent it for weddings in general). This seems a little more reasonable to me - it seems like the church's perogative - until I imagine a situation where the church similarly refuses to allow the use of its property, because it disapproves of an interracial wedding. It seems like if one is justified, then so is the other, so, I'm not entirely comfortable with any of the options. I don't think that this situation would be particularly improved if the church could argue that the women's activity was not nationally legally legitimate. Also brought up is
It seems like this guy has an obvious recourse, which is to say, "I'm sorry, but I only offer preparation for Prebytarian weddings, which you're ineligible for." Unless Presbytarians have one of the churches which are willing to marry same-sex couples, which kind of seems to be between him and his
Agh! I'm late for class!
Later: ...and his church.
Mr. Toews also said,
I think, though, that what's actually happening here is that a positive right is trumping a negative; the right to participate in this societal institution is more important than the right to have no contact with behaviour that upsets you. Especially considering the provisions already in place to avoid forcing folks into active participation, I think this is just fine.
(...but formally acknowledge that it's okay for them to have some separate but equal form of civil union. Why don't this - and the other argument, advanced by many thoughtful people, that governments should retreat entirely to civil unions, leaving the marriage business exclusively to religious authority - seem like a satisfactory solution to me? Mostly, because I think that marriage is, at this point, a secular institution - like Christmas, but much less conflicted about it. Atheists get married all the time, and when you see someone rejecting the institution, it's much more likely to be for its cultural implications than its religious.
Mr. Harper's amendment here, of course, would leave the legal and civil recognitions of marriage in place, and as such would actually restrict those churches as want to from marrying (with authority) homosexual couples, at least as far as I can tell.)
Secondly, he wants,
Amendments to strengthen protections for all those who refuse to be associated with same-sex marriage, not just for religious leaders asked to solemnize such marriages.
Which I still don't understand. It sounds suspiciously like people want the "right" not to see a couple in wedding rings kissing on the bus, which to me is pretty difficult to justify.
A while ago, another Conservative (Vic Toews, the opposition justice critic) gave a few examples of what they're apparently thinking of. The first was federal marriage commissioners who don't want to perform same-sex marriages, which I have very little immediate sympathy for; it seems to be that the marriage commissioner's job is to administrate civil marriage policy - to behave as the government's agent, not an autonomous authority on the propriety of a marriage. I don't imagine that, if you're a marriage commissioner and your sister walks in with a fellow you think is incredibly wrong for her, you're allowed to refuse to marry them; similarly if you're Catholic, and asked to marry a divorcee*. A policeman has the right to refuse to enforce a law he believes is immoral, but I'm pretty sure that he exercises that by resigning; as far as I'm aware, the same, here.
(*Unless I'm remembering wrong, and Catholics don't disapprove of remarriage. Someone does.)
After that, he talks about a church that is being sued by a lesbian couple, because it wouldn't rent its building out for their wedding (presumably, they will rent it for weddings in general). This seems a little more reasonable to me - it seems like the church's perogative - until I imagine a situation where the church similarly refuses to allow the use of its property, because it disapproves of an interracial wedding. It seems like if one is justified, then so is the other, so, I'm not entirely comfortable with any of the options. I don't think that this situation would be particularly improved if the church could argue that the women's activity was not nationally legally legitimate. Also brought up is
A person who offers a marriage preparation course for a Presbyterian congregation but is reluctant to advertise it in the community because he might have to open it up to gay couples.
It seems like this guy has an obvious recourse, which is to say, "I'm sorry, but I only offer preparation for Prebytarian weddings, which you're ineligible for." Unless Presbytarians have one of the churches which are willing to marry same-sex couples, which kind of seems to be between him and his
Agh! I'm late for class!
Later: ...and his church.
Mr. Toews also said,
"What we are seeing is a consistent pattern... Whenever equality rights and religious rights collide, equality rights trump."
I think, though, that what's actually happening here is that a positive right is trumping a negative; the right to participate in this societal institution is more important than the right to have no contact with behaviour that upsets you. Especially considering the provisions already in place to avoid forcing folks into active participation, I think this is just fine.
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Small thing
Date: 2005-02-18 12:34 am (UTC)Re: Small thing
Date: 2005-02-18 01:19 am (UTC)But if, for example, a hotel were only renting rooms to caucasian people, and some person who was not caucasian offered some complaint, as a result of which they were penalized for - or forced to abandon - this policy, I would consider that to be a pretty reasonable sequence of events. Perhaps the difference is that the church is not primarily a business...?
I'm not sure. I do remain skeptical that legalizing same-sex marriage would have much impact on the consideration of this sort of incident, one way or the other.
-Garran
Re: Small thing
Date: 2005-02-18 02:56 am (UTC)Ooh! Ooh! I'll do that!
As long as the church is a non-government entity, which I think is the case there(?), I'll argue very strongly that the church has the right to deny anyone service for any reason. How the church deals with individuals who deny service in violation of the church's policies, or even how the greater church organization handles individual churches doing such things, is entirely an internal matter for the church.
The only problem I have is if the church has exclusive rights to marry people, the law says gay people can be married, and the church fails in that duty. Then the government can, and should, step in to remedy the situation. I'm not sure where I stand if the law speaks neither for nor against marriage and the church does this, though I think I tend to favor the church. But this is all hypothetical, as I doubt your churches have that kind of authority anyway.
Re: Small thing
Date: 2005-02-18 02:59 am (UTC)My quoted piece of text should not be as stated above, but in fact should read:
> Certainly some libertarians would probably argue that that's fine, and the market will punish them
Re: Small thing
Date: 2005-02-18 05:33 am (UTC)Hmm, that's an interesting point, too. Nonprofit churches are a lot easier to argue for.