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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
June 29, 2003
The light that failed
What do I think about "gay marriage"? In last week's Spectator I entered my protest against the way a provincial Court of Appeal overturned common law pertaining to marriage that had been in force throughout the time since our Confederation. Thanks to Trudeau's Charter of Rights which was embedded in our constitution by means of a 1982 stunt that I and many Canadians have never accepted as valid we now live within a perpetual court-ordered revolution. For our courts have been allowed to seize the legislative prerogative of Parliament. They no longer apply law but write it themselves to suit the convenience and ideology of a narrow elite from Canada's law schools. Parliament is being reduced to the function of rubber-stamping the courts' decisions -- and the principle of responsible government in this country has been overthrown. That was the big immediate issue. I now turn to "gay marriage" itself as only an example of the sort of thing we had better get used to since our opinions as a people are no longer solicited on any important question. As the courts continue to realize the extent of their power they will legislate more and more surprising things that will fall on us like this has without public warning. First the shriek and then the pinprick: we now have a Red Queen system of governance. First the decision then the discussion -- moderated by the hosts of Cross-Canada Check-Up on the subsequent Sunday empowered to keep order through the judicious use of such mallet-whacking terms as "homophobic". A similar attempt is being made in the United States to get the courts to order "gay marriage". We await a try-on judgment from the Massachusetts Supreme Court -- a bench loaded with Canadian-style left-libertines. They will probably cite the Canadian decision in the cause of hot-wiring their own constitutional vehicle. And according to Justice Scalia's dissent the U.S. Supreme Court's strikedown of the Texas sodomy law on Thursday has already provided the reasoning to uphold any Massachusetts challenge. The "right" in the U.S. are anyway divided among themselves -- the more libertarian of them assuming that "gay marriage" is a matter of little consequence and only the "social conservatives" seriously vexed. The extent to which the broad majority of Americans are socially conservative has never been fully tested; but since they couldn't stand up to Roe v. Wade I don't expect them to stand up to this. Marriage itself is hardly unimportant; but we must see from the above that the institution is indefensible. This isn't a fight I'm expecting to win and I must write if at all in the spirit of the Elizabethan churchman Richard Hooker Though for no other cause, yet for this; that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream. In reducing the question of marriage and the institution of family that depends on it to the lowest common denominator of "equality rights" we commit a terrible and unthinking act of barbarism. To understand what marriage is and how it has evolved is to follow the course of the rise of civilization. We became what we are today -- so far as we remain civilized -- because of certain norms our ancestors established and alternatives that they rejected in the very cause of raising the standards of our moral life above those of the mere human animal. Here is the question of what is natural: and it is a question deeper than law. It may be argued for instance that homosexual unions are "natural" among the apes. They were certainly "natural" among the nomads of our prehistory -- and for them and even for the ancient Greeks sodomy was a part of man-boy mentoring. It does not follow that homosexual unions are "natural" to a species raised above the apes or above the last vestiges of our own primitive warrior tribalism. Now that was a hard saying and I want to qualify it. I could say truly that I have known of several homosexual unions that would be a good example to any couple; including one quite extraordinary. (God moves in mysterious ways.) And not only are some of my closest most beloved friends homosexuals but the person who has taught me most about the social evolution to which I just referred is himself a homosexual living in sin . He is one of those remarkable independent scholars who studies history and philosophy not with a view to vindicating his own interests -- but instead to learn whatever they will teach including the uncomfortable truths. And it is he who has brought home to me the difference between tolerance and approval. We must never ever again persecute homosexuals; we must live and let live. But the institution of marriage confers not tolerance but public approval. The idea of marriage as a permanent socially-sanctioned relation between one man and one woman -- rejecting homosexuality rejecting polygamy and polyandry and further rejecting marriage between close relatives within the family -- was itself the project not merely of centuries but of millennia of human trial and error whether or not we conceive that history as having been divinely guided. The "norm" of the "nuclear" heterosexual family was hard won; but it became written into the fabric of society as part of our very strategy of survival. It is or was the via media itself. That is not an opinion but a warning: we are tampering with things deeper than our own understanding and which will have huge consequences over time. There are reasons why the Hebrews outlasted rival ancient tribes; why the Romans succeeded the Greeks; why the West rose over the East. And what we consider in our society to be "normal" goes to the heart of these reasons. But the attack through the state on marriage and the family did not begin yesterday. In Canada it began in the 1960s with the "liberalization" of the divorce laws; and then the overturning of all penalties against abortion. For to mean something marriages had to be nearly indissoluble and the children of those marriages secure. Spouses could be separated; but to allow too casual divorce and remarriage was to make marriage itself an inconsequential bond and thus the family inconsequential. Now we are riding a little farther into the sunset. I fear the day is behind us and the uncharted night ahead. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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