Canadian Province Legalizes Gay Marriage

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-18-2004
Canadian Province Legalizes Gay Marriage
2
Fri, 09-17-2004 - 1:59am

Hooray for Manitoba!  Can our resident Canadian posters (Suemox, Nicecanadianlady, papparic, etc) add anything to this?


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040917/D85560P80.html


WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) - Manitoba became the fourth Canadian province to legalize same-sex marriage when a judge on Thursday declared the province's current definition of marriage unconstitutional.

Justice Douglas Yard's ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed last month by three couples, arguing that the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman was contrary to the equality provision in the charter.

"The traditional definition of marriage in Manitoba is reformulated to mean a voluntary union for life of two persons," Yard ruled.

Courts legalized gay marriage in the provinces of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec in 2003 and in the Yukon territory in July.

The news was greeted by cheers and hugs among the couples and their supporters. Lobby groups say they expect the first same-sex wedding in Manitoba by the end of the week.

The case marks the first time the federal government has not opposed a same-sex marriage lawsuit. The government has recently asked the nation's high court to spell out what authority it does have in the regulation of marriage.

The Canadian changes come as several U.S. states wrestle with the issue. Massachusetts' top court recently allowed same-sex weddings but the issue has run into legal disputes elsewhere.

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Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Fri, 09-17-2004 - 10:14am
The issue of same sex marriage is not without controversy in Canada either. There are many who have strong opinions on the matter. I think in Canada there is a more clearly defined separation between church and state (morality and the law) and in the 60s we had a prime minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau (actually he was justice minister at the time) who tackled the issue of sex and the law in a manner that was quite progressive for the times. He said "The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation." Trudeau was the Prime Minister of Canada for most of the years between 1968 and 1984.

He was also instrumental in repatriating our constitution from Britain in 1982 and entrenching the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You can't really understand Canada until you know about Trudeau. His vision for the country is still felt to this very day.

Personally, it's no skin off my nose and doesn't effect MY marriage (or my personal definition of marriage) one bit. In fact, I find some of the fly by night marriages and quickie divorces between some men and women more detrimental to marriage than the union of two gay people.

However, speaking of divorce, this recent story is more of a landmark than the one about yet another province (Manitoba) granting rights for gay marriage (that is soooo yesterday LOL ;o)

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=583372&section=news

Canada grants same-sex divorce in legal first

Tue 14 September, 2004 18:45



TORONTO (Reuters) - One of Canada's first same-sex marriages has ended in divorce in a precedent-setting case in the country that may also be the first of its kind in the world, the lawyer for one of the two women says.

Julia Hannaford said the Ontario Superior Court's decision to grant the two women a divorce on Monday is unlikely to be appealed by the government and paves the way for other same-sex couples to cut ties if they want to.

"For sure it is the first same-sex divorce in Canada, for sure it is the first same-sex divorce in North America and we are pretty sure, based on the research we have done, that this is the first same-sex divorce in the world," she said.

The two women were married just days after a landmark Ontario court decision in June 2003 opened the door to same-sex marriages. But after a five-year relationship, the marriage lasted only five days before they separated.

In a short ruling on Monday, Justice Ruth Mesbur said the definition of spouse in the Divorce Act -- as "of a man or woman who are married to each other" -- was "unconstitutional, inoperative and of no force and effect."

Hannaford said the Canadian government agreed that the spouse definition infringed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and did not oppose the two women's right to divorce. The court has ordered the names of the two women be kept secret.

The was disagreement, however, over what to do with the offending phrase, whether to redefine it as "two persons who are married to each other" as the two women want or leave it undefined, the government's preference.

"I would say that there is no chance that the government would suddenly oppose or appeal the granting of the divorce," Hannaford said.

Canada has become North America's leader in gay weddings since courts in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Yukon ruled it was unconstitutional to ban same-sex couples from getting married.

"The extension of marriage to same-sex couples was the big threshold, this is just the logical extension of it," said David Rayside, a University of Toronto political scientist. "It's the other side of the coin. You can't do the one without doing the other."

The Supreme Court of Canada will examine the gay marriage issue in the fall to determine whether same-sex unions must be permitted constitutionally.






Edited 9/17/2004 10:31 am ET ET by suemox

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Fri, 09-17-2004 - 10:33am
I don't know if anyone is even REMOTELY interested in Trudeau (but he is one of my heros) so I never pass up an opportunity to educate people about him.

:o)

A little about our Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that Trudeau enacted in 1982:

"Canada's charter has also affected how people entrench rights internationally. Peter Hogg says it has had a major influence on the way several democratic countries have selected their own bills of rights.

"Canada has been a strong model, for example, influencing the bill of rights adopted by South Africa, Israel and New Zealand. Britain has simply accepted the European convention on civil and political rights, but I think that one reason it did that was because of the Canadian model," says Hogg.

Life in Canada

Most agree that the impact of the charter on Canadian life could not have been foreseen. It has guided the way Canadians relate to each other, dramatically changed the way we relate to the criminal justice system, enflamed a drive for regional and minority rights and placed broad powers into the hands of an appointed judiciary.

Alan Cairns is a professor of political science who has published several volumes on Canada's Constitution and is regarded as a leading academic on the politics of charter rights and charter federalism. He says that Canadians have simultaneously been unified and fragmented by the charter.



"It has become, to a huge majority of Canadians – including those within Quebec, the fundamental constitutional instrument which they identify," he says, "So it has transformed the psyche of Canadians. This document is not just an external arrangement of rules by which we live, this is an attempt to transform who we are and who we actually feel and think we are. On the whole I think it has had that effect.

"The initial federal government premise was on developing a pan-Canadian identity. Though that has happened, it has also kind of fragmented our identity because the disabled and other groups will look to Section 15 on equality rights and others would claim various sections as their own. The women's movement, for example, claim Section 28 as theirs, they won it and prevented the notwithstanding clause from ever being applied to it."

Bob Rae says Cairns is wrong. Rae negotiated for Ontario at the Charlottetown constitutional conference in 1992 which sought to bring Quebec into the fold, give aboriginal people a stronger position, reform the Senate and heal regional disparities through a social union. Rae admits Charlottetown was defeated because too much change was tried all at once. Still, he doesn't believe the charter fragments Canadians.

"The charter is a protection of civil liberties and functions as a symbol for all Canadians," says Rae. "Prior to the charter, most constitutional issues were about federal or provincial jurisdiction, and post-charter, the jurisprudence and the focus has moved towards something else, or towards individual and group rights. I think the charter resonates with all Canadians because it's a constitutional expression of freedom and this is a very important value for Canadians."

Peter Russell

Recent academic polling bears this out. A survey of 2,000 Canadians in 1987 and 1999 conducted by several academics, including Peter Russell, University of New Brunswick's Paul Howe and the University of Toronto's Joe Fletcher, found 82 per cent of Canadians think the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a good thing. This number was slightly lower in Quebec at around 64 per cent in 1987 while rising to more than a 70 per cent approval rating in 1999. The surveys were published in a volume called Judicial Power and Canadian Democracy.

A poll done in February 2002 backs up these findings. The poll, conducted for the Centre for Research and Information on Canada, found that 88 per cent of Canadians felt the charter was good for Canada.

A Growing Attachment

Though the charter has been a source of endless debate and academic discussion, the appetite for this seems insatiable. Experts seem to agree that after 20 years the charter is an increasingly well-loved document and a vast majority of Canadians seem to like it.

On the 20th anniversary of the charter, legal experts like Peter Hogg and drafter Roy McMurtry are appearing at a conference in Toronto called The Charter at Twenty. It seems, as academics, politicians, lawyers and, yes, journalists too, talk about this defining document, it has come to mean so much to so many Canadians – whether we know it or not."




Edited 9/17/2004 10:34 am ET ET by suemox