Till redefinition do us part

By Paul Schratz

The arguments in favour of traditional marriage haven’t changed much since last year, but a great deal else has.

We’re now witnessing an acceleration of decisions from governments, courts, and other bodies building on the acceptance of "gay marriage."

Schools are developing pro-homosexual curricula, while limiting the ability of parents to exempt their children; the terms mother and father are being replaced by such gibberish as "carers"; children conceived through in-vitro fertilization, already puzzled, will be thoroughly confused over their genetic heritage when they might be the biological product of two mothers and no father; an Ontario court has ruled that two women can both be listed as mothers on birth documents; Boston Catholic Charities has been ordered to permit adoptions by same-sex couples; and on and on it goes....

They say the sky hasn’t fallen since "gay marriage" was introduced. Fallen or not, marriage certainly isn’t being shored up by developments such as these.

Now Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced, consistent with his election pledge, that he will bring the matter of marriage before Parliament. He will put to MPs the option of reopening the marriage debate this fall.

Naturally, most of the voices coming across loud and clear are quite perplexed, to put it mildly, over why the prime minister would want to change things that are working so well, from their perspective.

For them, same-sex law is in place, is inclusive, and harms no one, while Harper, they insist, risks hurting homosexual couples’ feelings, alienating liberal Canadians, and dredging up old Reform Party habits.

Conservative MP Garth Turner, who falls squarely in the What’s The Big Deal? camp, sums it up.

"...to be frank, there are more important issues affecting the lives of all of us ... I truly hope a vote on this marriage thing will come quickly and pass just as fast. Get it behind us. Move on."

The argument is that things are going so well, and there are so many other greater concerns, that the bigots would be well advised to leave well enough alone.

Harper pledged to keep the marriage issue alive, and his proposal for a fall vote is fulfilling that promise. It’s passing strange to see the usual editorialists and commentators, who would normally tear any other politician limb from limb for not holding to a campaign promise, seriously suggest that Harper is venturing needlessly into dangerous waters on marriage.

It’s also curious how people who are so worked up over redefining marriage can’t understand why others might be so worked up over opposing them. An election promise, the historical and spiritual significance of marriage, and the sociological experimenting that’s being introduced are less important than soothing the feelings of any homosexual couples who got hitched over the past few months.

Harper’s position on marriage was one of the factors responsible for his election last year. It’s hard to say what his personal comfort level is on the matter, but he is to be commended for sticking to his guns on this crucial issue.

Marriage is not just a status symbol, a rubber-stamped relationship. Marriage matters, and government puts its seal of approval on it, because of the fact that it’s within this relationship that men and women typically produce children.

Otherwise, government should have no interest in intimate personal relationships. It has already handed over all the rights that go along with marriage to any two people who want them. What’s at issue now is the word marriage, and those who want to dismantle it won’t be satisfied until they’ve got claim to that.

If marriage can evolve as far as it has, it can evolve further in meaninglessness. A few months isn’t much time to measure the impact on society of a major cultural and sociological alteration like this, not when weddings are months in the planning, when marriages are measured in years, when the cultural needs of young adults are decades in formation, and when families are generations in developing legacies.

Skies don’t fall overnight. The abortion sky took years. So did the divorce sky, the contraception sky, the in-vitro/fatherless/motherless birth sky, and the frozen embryo sky.

The proof will be in the future generations who must deal with the fallout from what we have wrought today.