So what?
The constraints are:
- Two people not more in a marriage (does not matter what sex or sexes the parties are).
- Each person is 16 or older.
- Each person consents, with the consent being free (i.e. not under duress) and also enlightened (i.e. understanding what marriage is and that one does not have to get married).
The law applies to all of Canada, including it’s provinces and territories. If you come across a marriage act or the like in a provincial statute, that law will usually deal with the mechanics of how a marriage is technically made and registered, but does not apply to who can get married.
Interesting.
It completely overturns centuries of legal and social precedent. Including obvious things like probate in the absence of a will. And minor things like who may inherit an IRA.
Certainly in a modern interrelated world with taxes, insurance, big corporations, organized mass market investing, and all the rest, simply deciding that marriage is a legal irrelevancy much like hair color will have a vast array of immediate, far reaching, and utterly unintended side effects.
Or do you propose we create omnibus legislation to address all of these other side issues by other means?
I edited that to how I’d prefer the act to be if one was drafted.
Ultimately though I’d rather it be a states’ issue than a national one.
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Your rewrite doesn’t change the meaning from the original.
I just said I’d be okay with a definition of marriage act, just as long as it defined it as between consenting males and females, not any and all consenting adults.
Better throw “humans” in there as well, eh? In case, ya know, some people (or some things) are confused.
:rolleyes:
Bad idea: it would eliminate the good things – child custody, tax status, visitation rights of a spouse in hospital, inheritance, community property, many others – that marriage was (in part) instituted to govern. You’re throwing out a lot of babies with that bathwater.
Can anyone honestly say they know what the OP is getting at? I’ve guessed, but I’m not certain.
Yes, sad but true.
His intent is clear. His law drafting skills suck. But IMO his intent is clear. Despicable, but clear.
It is…have a group that is arguing they need this? SSM already has SCOTUS supporting 14th Amendment rights. Legislating to say the same thing is at best a feel good measure that comes with the cost of renewing the debate instead of working on other things.
Is there a big movement among other groups, like among the polyamorous, to get their rights for marriage recognized that I’m missing? If so I’d support legislating. Then we’re not in search of a problem.
ITA
You’re right (at least, I assume your count of the eight provinces and one territory is correct) and the Supreme Court of Canada ruling on SSM was the government request for a reference ruling in 2004. There was significant language touching on human rights in various lower court rulings before that, notably the significant Ontario Appeals Court ruling the year before. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that the SCC had made a significant ruling before that, and I finally found what I was thinking of.
In fact, the Supreme Court of Canada had already laid much of the judicial groundwork for SSM in M. v. H (1999), although the case itself wasn’t about same-sex marriage* per se*, but rather about the validity of same-sex common law unions. It did, however, establish that civil law on such matters as property rights applied to same-sex partners, contrary to the way the Ontario Family Law Act was then worded. It ruled that such laws were discriminatory because they implied that “individuals in same-sex relationships generally, are less worthy of recognition and protection. It implies that they are judged to be incapable of forming intimate relationships of economic interdependence as compared to opposite-sex couples, without regard to their actual circumstances. Such exclusion perpetuates the disadvantages suffered by individuals in same‑sex relationships and contributes to the erasure of their existence.”
I tend not to remember much as I ramble through life, but something that will never forget is the talk the counsel for the respondent kindly gave to a group of us about M. v. H. For the first time it brought home to me on a very visceral level how horridly in-human it is to discriminate based on sex.
Okay, as the OP, here’s my point.
I personally think the legalization of same sex marriage was a good thing, because it brought gay people into the mainstream, and furthered their acceptance by society.
However, having proved that it is possible to make such a fundamental change to a sacred institution like marriage, polygamous groups are going to start lobbying for legal recognition as well.
I personally think that polygamy tends to lead to oppressive situations for women.
As I said, I don’t think a Definition of Marriage Act is necessary, at least for now. But that may be because I found the Defense of Marriage Act so repugnant. Ironic, huh?
OK, as I said earlier, it’s already explicitly illegal in every state. What will another law do?
That was certainly true in the past, but is is necessarily the case today? We have so many more civil rights protections than were around in the middle of the nineteenth century. The courts would not permit group marriages to operate to the detriment of women. Group marriages could be regulated to be fair to all participants, and to give protection to the children of such marriages.
Just as kids today can have “two mommies,” kids in the future could have four mothers and three fathers, at least under the law. It could turn out to be terribly complex and confusing, but there’s no reason it must be unfair.
I wasn’t meaning that the reference wasn’t a ruling. Rather, in the Reference the SCC did not answer whether the Charter requires same-sex marriage. That was the fourth question the federal government put to the Court. The Court declined to answer that question. So there are two appellate court decisions and seven trial court decisions saying SSM is constitutionally required, but no SCC decision on that key point.
True, but that case and a later case show the difference between the rights of common law couples and married couples.
The Ontario law provided that common law couples had the right to support, but no right to property distribution. Only married couples had a right to distribution of matrimonial property.
Since at that time, opposite-sex couples could not marry but opposite-sex couples could, this was a major protection that was denied to same-sex couples in some provinces.
When the federal Parliament changed the law to allow same-sex marriage across the country, it automatically opened up those rights that were tied to marriage to all same-sex couples who wished to get married (in addition to property rights, also probate and intestacy rights, adoption rights, and so on).
(Note that in one province, Saskatchewan, the expansion of marriage to same-sex marriage did not expand these other rights under provincial law, because the provincial Legislature some years before had already changed its family property laws, inheritance laws, adoption laws and so on to apply equally to married and common law couples, whether opposite sex or same sex.)