Lifestyles of Bishops & other stories

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If They do, They do • Colin James Haslett 'What, if anything, finally convinced me to come out in favour of gay marriage was the pathetic quality of the arguments being levelled against it'.

Gay marriage. Now if there was ever a topic that seemed like I wasn’t qualified to comment on…. Let’s see, I’m straight and I’m single, confirmed in both states. I have few gay friends but I haven’t actually discussed the topic with any of them and none of them has ever asked for my opinion. Here in Canada, however, it’s a topic that’s been in the news a lot lately, now that our Supreme Court has declared laws banning gay marriage unconstitutional.

The provincial and federal governments have been scrambling to rewrite the laws so that they’ll be legal. The laws, that is: making gay marriage legal is just an incidental, a side effect of making the laws legal. Not that far south of here they’re just getting around to no longer imprisoning gay men for doing what it is that gay men, and many guests of those same prisons if the Shawshank Redemption was to be believed, do. And not seeming qualified to comment on a subject has never stopped me from expressing my opinions before. And most of the people commenting on this topic already seem just as unqualified as I do, for mostly the same reasons.

I’m all for it, by the way; gay marriage, gay divorce, gay adoption, gay custody battles, gay joint tax filing and gay support payments. If you really want the rose you’ve got to take the thorns. It has been pointed out that US American couples racing to Canada to get a marriage licence had better hope it really is forever because residency requirements for getting married in this country are pretty lax when compared to those for getting a divorce in this country. If US courts get at all wishy-washy as to recognizing the marriages these couples may not be able to legally divorce in either country. On the other hand, if they really are ‘til death do they part then it’s a moot point, but can they really expect to do statistically any better than hetro couples today. It could get messy.
What, if anything, finally convinced me to come out in favour of gay marriage was the pathetic quality of the arguments being levelled against it.

Mostly they boil down to tradition, particularly religious tradition, even more particularly Christian tradition. It makes me wonder how many of the people writing venomous letters to the editor still eat fish on Fridays. Frankly I think that a lot of modern Christians need to take a very close look at how they live their lives in the 21st century and then try to remember a seemingly defunct Christian tradition about only those without sin being the ones who get to cast stones. And as far as the effect this could have on the next generation goes, yeah, who could possibly want to teach their children about love and tolerance. But as with most other cases of rampant Christian hypocrisy over the last two millennia, all I can really do is shrug and throw out the occasional "Way to be like Jesus," at some placard waving lunatic. Trying to convince someone who’s a really shitty Christian that his behaviour is decidedly un-Christlike is like trying to convince an Area 51 conspiracy theorist that extraterrestrial vehicles that travel faster than the speed of light are impossible. I mean, accusing the government of lying about visitors from another world in Roswell NM has become a tradition with those folks.

Of course, now ol’ John Paul II’s decided to step into the arena by telling Catholic politicians to remember that the Catholic part comes first and things like democratic representation and human rights come a distant second. I suppose that one could argue that a man born in Poland and living in Italy has just as much right interfering in Canadian politics as a heterosexual, single man has to comment on gay marriage. And one is more than welcome to be that stupid if one really wants to be, but I don’t want to hear about it. To use a very crude but somewhat apt analogy, as long as a man doesn’t try to shove part of his anatomy into part of my anatomy then I don’t care what else he does with that part of his anatomy, but as soon as he does try it I’ll try to cut that part of his anatomy off with a dull, rusty hatchet. The Pope is trying to shove his theology into my democracy, so try to guess how I feel right about now. My opinions and comments are just that, and while I will argue the righteousness of my position I won’t suggest that anyone who disagrees with me is going to go to hell because of that. I’m not a fan of the papacy on one of its good days, but lately I’ve been looking at Catholics who haven’t renounced their leader with a little less respect.

In the seeming middle ground of this whole debate, trying to seem moderate by taking up the great Canadian tradition of compromise, are those people who most generously allow that gay couples should be allowed to "conjoin" (and I thought that was what the Texas courts had been putting people in jail for), but that the word marriage should be reserved for traditional heterosexual couples, that it should still mean Man & Wife. What word do these people think should be used by gay couples? Wedded? Betrothed? Nuptials? Matrimony? All of those words have historically been used to describe heterosexual couples too and are just as likely to upset some delicately constituted, fire and brimstone, fundamentalist preacher somewhere. How about if we give gay couples a brand new word, like Pelethamage or Hintoganted or Xemzoquebikavuery. (Right about now I really wish my keyboard had an umlaut or an accent ague.) Would that actually make anyone happy? Once again all we’re talking about is a traditional definition, of a word if not an institution. Ironically language has always been far more dynamic than social mores. Heck, words like gay, queer and faggot all had other traditional definitions until quite recently but the hate mongers didn’t mind applying these words to homosexuals, so why can’t they have marriage too.

It may not seem like it but I’m actually in favour of traditions, provided they make sense and do no significant harm. Generally I’m in favour of anything that makes sense and does no significant harm, I just don’t find a whole lot of traditions that meet these requirements. I like the Canada Day fireworks and if I were a US American I’d probably like the Independence Day fireworks just as much. I think they’re a fine opportunity to bring people together to celebrate their nation and put some smiles on faces, and the air pollution from the smoke is a tiny fraction of what our cars spew out every day of the year. And leeches, there’s an old medical tradition that’s found its way back into modern medicine because it turns out they actually work in some applications. I like leeches too. But then you get traditions like rhinoceros horn aphrodisiacs, ritual circumcision and the monarchy and I start wanting to give people a good slap. To be perfectly honest I have to qualify my earlier "All for it," by stating that marriage tends to be another one of those slap-mood inducing traditions.

Yes, I understand the legal need to define exactly when Yours and Mine becomes Ours, but common law doesn’t require a justice of the peace or a preacher, it doesn’t require rings or fancy outfits, and it doesn’t require a financially crippling party that nets six gift wrapped toasters and some embarrassing home videos. I just don’t understand why, in this day and age, when two (or more, if that’s what turns their cranks) consenting adults decide to make a commitment to each other, there has to be a third party intervention – whether it’s getting a civil license or a religious blessing or even a bride’s father’s permission. If you love each other, if you truly believe that you want to and can be faithful to each other, support each other, spend the rest of your lives with each other, then why should it take anything more elaborate than looking each other in the eye and saying "I do."

Sure, if it doesn’t last then it doesn’t last. Welcome to real life, try to be a decent human being about it and end things as simply, quickly and painlessly as possible. This applies to everyone, married or not, and if gays are just as susceptible to the potential heartaches that can result from loving each other then shouldn’t they be just as eligible for the perks. That’s really what it boils down to. It isn’t about traditions or setting an example or semantics. It isn’t even about tolerance or social change or legal recognition. It’s about anybody and everybody who’s willing to take a risk with their hearts deserving the same respect from everybody else. Besides, now we’ll finally get some real gay divorcees.

© Colin James Haslett - August 6th 2003
chasman@shaw.ca

Seeking Bliss
Colin James Haslett
on finding happiness

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