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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
March 6, 2005
We need a leader
As I know at first hand there is an extraordinary amount of spontaneous protest against the same-sex revolution that is being effected in Canada at both federal and provincial levels. This takes the form of letter-writing campaigns rallies meetings. It is all ineffectual because no one is leading it. The media generally show little interest and in Ottawa the leader of the opposition Stephen Harper has funked his own historical moment. He refuses to take a formal stand against same-sex marriage. With two-thirds of the voting population shown in polls to be opposed to it and crying out for his leadership he is playing the safe neutral. The creepiness of life and law in the New Canada was illustrated by the passage of Ontario Bill 171 the Spousal Relationships Statute Law Amendment Act Feb. 24th. It was rushed through the Legislative Assembly in three days with all-party collusion and without a single recorded vote. (The interested reader may web-search the admirable LifeSiteNews for detailed information and links.) The Bill presented itself innocuously as an administrative measure to remove "gender and gender-specific language from Ontario definitions of spousal terms" in 73 statutes. Such words as "husband" wife man and woman widow widower opposite sex were permanently retired from provincial law to be replaced with such terms as "spouse" spouses person and "two persons". Even the distinction between married and unmarried was being erased with the replacement of "same-sex partner" with the word "spouse". Tacked on to this rather incongruously were amendments to the Marriage Act and the Human Rights Code establishing the right of "religious officials" to refuse to solemnize a marriage and to refuse the use of his or her "sacred place" if he or she found the marriage unconscionable. This was a sop to the large number of religious people who were bombarding their MPPs with questions and protests. And it worked: the Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops were bought off by it. They issued a statement warmly supporting the tack-on part of the legislation that could easily be interpreted as lending their support to the whole Bill. It was just the cover the McGuinty government needed. We will see over time and probably not much time if the protections offered to priests have any force. For they are sure to be challenged. My guess is that the next wave of the assault will be the removal of tax-exemptions from any religious organization which refuses to solemnize same-sex marriages. The idea has already been floated by the activists. Moreover while bona fide "religious officials" may have some formal protection in law the general body of the faithful now have none. Lay people who object in good conscience to such things as same-sex marriage but have no "licence to preach" may soon find themselves obliged to hide their views or risk prosecution for a "hate crime". Even those with such a "licence to preach" will find that it doesn't allow them to preach against sodomy from the pulpit. I know that this will be criticized as "alarmist". It is not. If you compare what is happening right now with what was dismissed as alarmist less than a decade ago you may detect the speed at which the revolution is moving. The new Ontario Act has in addition to what it accomplished directly made a powerful indirect contribution to that revolution by identifying the very words that may in the near future be ruled discriminatory. The "spouse" who refers publicly to "my husband" or "my wife" is now saying something merely politically incorrect. But the grounds have now been laid to make today's faux pas into tomorrow's criminal infraction. The Ontario legislation has moreover prepared the way for the federal legislation now being written. In the strictest legal terms every existing marriage in this country is being redefined as a "gay marriage" in order not to discriminate against the few marriages that are same-sex. Nor are all the wrinkles in previous Canadian law yet ironed. To this moment a distinction remains between a "natural" and "legal" parent. This has already been spotted as discriminatory against same-sex couples who cannot have "natural" children. The erasure of that distinction -- with legislation also likely to be presented as an innocuous revision of "outdated language" -- will remove the last impediment to the complete destruction of the traditional family. It will also -- just in passing -- remove the woman's right to expect child support from the man who has "only naturally" knocked her up. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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