Ad Sweden to the list of countries that recognize same sex marriage, as of may first 2009. As far as I know, they’re still chugging along creating bland pop music and cheap furniture.
“Bill” is shorter to type.
Number of times the ‘gay marriage question’ was seriously discussed by anyone I knew when it was happening: 0
Number of times it has been mentioned in my presence since then: 0
Myself (and most people I know) were pretty much “it’s about time” when the resolution came through.
Full disclosure: I’m pretty much a liberal pinko commie by Canadian standards (and so are most of my peers), so I suppose I would be shot on sight in Texas (where I am going next week) if they knew my political views.
But it’s not the same thing. A bill is the draft of legislation; a resolution is just an expression of political views by the House.
Even before the SSM bill passed, there was an amusing period of time between approximately summer 2004 and summer 2005 in which one province after another was getting SSM.
After the Yukon got it, in a ruling that basically said, “This is settled law, the only thing we need to do is see to it it’s applied in the Yukon,” provincial governments pretty much stopped contesting the lawsuits and basically just showed up to say, “Knock yourselves out.” So over that period, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador all got SSM in a string of very short court cases. It got to the point where we were like, “Oh, Newfoundland got it? Hm, nice.” Only four of 13 provinces and territories were left by the time the SSM bill was passed federally.
As a non-white South African…what s/he said.
The resistance was largely led by the African Christian Democrat Party, IIRC. The Anglican Church was also very split over the issue. I can’t really comment on the RCC, it’s not that big a denomination here.
Here, the advocacy for SSM was tied to human rights activism, which involved a lot of anti-apartheid activists, but really the AIDS treatment issue overshadowed SSM as an issue for most people in the affected communities.
I know a few married gay couples, so great for them. I have heard a couple people complaining - mostly racist blacks, the kind who claim there’s no native African homosexuality. So, ignorant bigots, basically.
There was some debate about allowing same-sex registered partnerships in Norway. The churches, for the most part, stayed out of it, but some conservative Christians objected, on the basis that it would somehow erode “traditional” marriage. Then last year Parliament voted to eliminate the differences and make marriage available to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples, as registered partnerships had been since their creation. Again, little was heard from the churches, which can opt out of performing same-sex marriages if they choose; some conservative Christians and social conservatives objected that the word “marriage” was special and should be preserved for opposite-sex couples.
Now that same-sex marriage is legal, I rarely hear anything about it outside of the contexts I’d expect to hear about opposite-sex marriage (which is to say, someone who is getting married, is invited to a wedding, or similar). Although this is an election year for us, no political party, even the Christian Democrats, is making opposition to same-sex marriage a visible part of their campaign. It just stopped being an issue.
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Valteron, it’s my understanding, from your posts in other threads, that you are in fact gay and in a SSM (grats on being married).
I find it somewhat incongruous, then, that you would mislabel the Nuer female-female marriage as “crypto-lesbian” when it was repeatedly pointed out that these are not lesbian marriages, and I find it very disturbing that you would substitute a nonsense word for the name of one of the largest, oldest tribal confederations in Africa, especially a nonsense word that may call to mind either a bone-in-the-nose-witch-doctor-in-a-grass-skirt stereotype or an old car horn or a childhood monster-under-the-bed.
You even repeat this in at least one other thread.
It’s hard for me to fathom how someone who is part of a subset striving for equal rights and treatment would use a seemingly disparaging term to refer to an ethnic group, especially one that I presume has done you personally no harm.
I’d have sent you a PM to point this out to you, but you have them turned off.
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I am sorry. You are right, it was disrespectful. I do not believe it was racist (for what it is worth I have a black person among my ancestors) but it was ignorant. I think the point I was trying to make is that we get too bogged down in discussing minutae. The customs of the Nuer in having a form of ssm is interesting, but this example, once stated, has very little traction, in my opinion, because the Nuer, as an animist society in Africa, has very little cultural or political relevance for America, compared to the experience of seven western democracies and five US States.
I realize that mswas or someone else had said that there was no example of any ssm in history, and this one exception proved that they were wrong. But it is nonetheless an obscure exception in the context of a debate about ssm in America. I was frustrated by the endless bickering about this one exception.
So I guess I unfairly took it out on the Nuer. My apologies.
I didn’t think you were being malicious, just unnecessarily snarky… and it seemed, well, odd considering your own position in the matter. And I’m kind of a dick about pointing out what seems to be hypocrisy.
see you in threads, eh?
Speaking of which, it is interesting to note that the massive vote of California’s African-Americans in favour of Proposition 8 was a major factor in its passage. I have also heard that the Mormon Church bankrolled the campaign big-time. Both groups have been subject to persecution and discrimination (Joseph Smith was tarred and feathered by a mob in 1832 and murdered by a mob in 1844).
Of course, both Blacks and Mormons have a perfect right to express and finance their political viewpoint, but when this amounts to an attack on the rights of another minority by people who should know what discrimination feels like, I have to wonder.
I don’t know if this request is possible, but I realize I was out of line and disrespectful in calling the Nuer in Africa the “Ooga-Boogas” in my OP. Is it too late to change that to something like “a group on Africa”?
Yeah, when I read about that I was surprised too.
Yes, I know. “Bill” was easier to type. The political impact was the same, the point the same, especially to folks who don’t live in Canada and to whom the distinction is presently without meaningful difference.
I wonder what the status of a same-sex marriage would have been if it were legally created in a province where it was legal (Say, Ontario) but the couple had then moved to a province that had not yet legalized it, like PEI? I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, but I always wondered.
In the USA, the notion of “full faith and credit” apparently does not extend to same sex marriage; a same sex marriage legally recognized by, say, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts appears (from what I can tell) to not be recognized if the couple moves a few miles and takes up residence in the State of New York.
Unfortunately, yes. There have been issues regarding Mods changing text and our current rules prohibit it, completely.
I will add a note directing readers of your earlier post to your subsequent statement.
That was actually the nature of some of the lawsuits: couples who had been married in Ontario sued for recognition in (I think) New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. I could be misremembering, though.
Being from CA and having to live through the whole Prop 8 crap, I got a firsthand account of how some black people perceive the whole gay rights thing.
It seems that a significant portion of them are offended by the characterization, from gay groups, that this civil rights battle is “just like” or an extension of the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s. You’ve never heard such hypocrisy until you’ve seen a guy who wouldnt have been able to get married to a white woman just 50 years ago stand in front of a mic and say gays shouldnt get married cause its against god! The ignorance is frightening.
Here in Alberta, there was a little grumbling by the Klein government in 2005, but they gave up when it became clear that opposing gay marriage was a losing proposition. Alberta is the most conservative province in Canada by far, and yet, our attitudes towards gay marriage are reasonably enlightened (we have higher public support for it than several other provinces). Just goes to show you that you don’t have to be anti-gay marriage to be conservative.
And of course, nothing bad has happened since gay marriage laws were passed. If anything, it’s been good for the institution of marriage. I think the refusal to allow gays to marry causes a lot of gay and straight people to think less of the institution of marriage itself. It’s human nature to dismiss something you aren’t allowed to have. But now that gays can marry, a lot of those people are now suddenly big on the whole concept of marriage again. I wish conservatives would wake up and realize that when people fight so hard to be allowed to marry, it’s a pretty good indication that they believe in the institution and think it’s a good thing. So let them marry, for God’s sake.
That’s a nice bit of retconning, Sam, but it doesn’t stand up to those pesky facts like:
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the Alberta government was so opposed to same-sex marriage that they were willing to override both the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Alberta Bill of Rights in an attempt to stop same-sex marriage in Alberta: see the Marriage Act, section 2;
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the Alberta government is just now getting around to adding sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination to the Alberta human rights act, only 11 years after the Supreme Court held that by not including sexual oriention in their human rights Act, Alberta was unconstitutionally discriminating against gays and lesbians, contrary to the Charter;
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and the bill that will add sexual orientation to the Alberta human rights act will also include a provision making it a breach of the human rights act for teachers to talk about sexual orientation if any parents object, and possibly even other topics such as evolution, which even the National Post is condemning: Alberta Opts for Hillbilly Human Rights.
Personally, I agree with your opinion that a person can be a conservative and not oppose same-sex marriage; I just don’t think you’ve proven it to be the case with the current Alberta government.
As I said on Facebook, when the National Post tells you you’re being homophobic and backwards, it’s probably time for a little lie-down.