The Anti-Climax of Gay Marriage in Canada

In July 2005, Canada passed the Civil Marriage Act, Bill C-38. This bill clarified marriage as being "...the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others.” Canada, a nation that has stubbornly refused to follow the US and Europe like a lemming off the cliffs of international fads, has also avoided a banking crisis, spoken against the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and maintained one of the best systems of socialized medicine in the world. Is gay marriage going to ruin their moral fiber?

According to the Catholic Church yes. The Catholic Church believes that children cannot be properly raised in a same-sex household and that "...Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalize polygamy and polyamory (group marriage).[sic]" [citation] But what has really happened in Canada?

I googled, "negative impacts of gay marriage in Canada" and received many hits...from 2004. It seems the opponent pretty much gave up lambasting gay marriage after the passage. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were taking a "wait and see" approach. Well, it's been five years and what do we see?

Almost no noticeable change in Canada's existence as a nation. It's been an anti-climax. The haters have almost nothing to say. What is interesting though, is that gay marriages seem to be much more resilient than straight marriages. It took two years after the first gay couples were married before any divorces of gay couples took place, and they are still much more rare than Canada's average of 37% divorces per year.

Interestingly, the only ones trying to slide down that slippery slope the Catholics so fiercely warn about are the Canadian Mormons. These Mormons (belonging to the same church which has been found guilty in California of political malfeasance while supporting California's ban on gay marriage) are already practicing polygamy! Why is the Catholic Church not addressing this with the same vitriol? On the same Catholic website that accuses homosexuals of ushering in an era of moral decay, only a couple of articles about Mormons come up...neither says a word about the Mormon practice of polygamy.

Now, I realize that the Mormon church may well officially deny polygamy, but it does seem to be a recurrent practice among their laity. I guess it is just "easier" for the Catholic Church to pick on gay people than it is to pick on the fifth largest Religious cult...err...organization in the world. Way to stand up for the oppressed Catholics!

The fact is that being an open, defiant, and proud gay person is a revolutionary act. We become targets of all kinds of intolerance. Of course, we seem to be making equally revolutionary progress. But it is important to remember that there are large, old, wealthy organizations that want us "in our place." Not only do they want us to stay away from the altar, but they want us to suffer from our "unnaturalness."

In the context of aids dissidence, it is clear that gays are chased, hunted, and harassed by Churches, how hard is it to grasp that we are also being targeted for medical mistreatment and exploitation?