Lesson from the North

With activists demanding the right to marry and bringing court cases against jurisdictions that forbid same-sex "marriage," you'd think there was a huge pent-up demand among gays and lesbians to marry. Well, while there certainly is some demand, it's probably not nearly as big as the activists want us to think. Take the case of Canada. In June 2003, a Canadian appeals court in Ontario called the ban on same-sex "marriages" unconstitutional. The next day the papers were filled with happy, newly married gay and lesbian couples. Today nearly all Canadians can marry someone of the same-sex, and Parliament is about to pass a bill that will redefine marriage for all Canadians. The results? Clifford Krauss, writing from Toronto in Sunday's New York Times says, "To read the newspapers here, it might seem as if gay and lesbian couples are beating down the doors of Toronto's City Hall for marriage licenses. But no: While they talk a lot about marriage, they don't do a lot of marrying." Krauss notes that since the June 2003 decision, only about 4,500 couples have married in Canada and that up to a quarter of those couples have been from other countries. What's the problem? Krauss seems to indicate that most homosexuals just don't believe in marriage. "For some [gay] writers," Krauss notes, "marriage is an institution that has not served the heterosexual population very well. In fact, common-law marriage is rising among heterosexuals in much of Canada. In addition, marriage, some have written, would threaten the sexual liberties many gay and lesbian couples enjoy." In an earlier piece in the Times, Krauss quoted Rinaldo Walcott, who teaches sociology at the University of Toronto, asking, "Will queers now have to live with the heterosexual forms of guilt associated with something called cheating?" This, you see, gets us to the heart of the matter. Not only would same-sex "marriage" redefine marriage based on gender, but it also threatens to redefine marriage behaviorally. If "something called cheating" is not a serious breach of faith in marriage for which people should feel guilt, then marriage becomes hollow and a sham. Hoover Institution scholar Stanley Kurtz, writing in National Review Online's blog, "The Corner," comments that the Canadian experience seems to be another example of what he has observed in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. Since same-sex "marriage" has been legal in those countries, fewer couples marry, and illegitimacy rates have skyrocketed. Krauss's article in the New York Times -- unwittingly, perhaps -- exposes the real gay "marriage" agenda: They want the right to marry only because they do not want heterosexuals to have something they can't have, not because they want to marry. They don't want monogamous relationships. They are willing -- eager, in fact -- to destroy the institution for everybody else. As Stanley Kurtz writes of the New York Times article, it "is all the more powerful as an indictment of gay marriage for coming from a reporter who favors gay marriage, and could care less about the social effects he describes." Listen, folks: The motives of the gay lobby need to be made absolutely clear, and you and I need to be resolute in working to oppose it, to insist that marriage remain between one man and one woman.

02/8/05