The Final Assault on Marriage Begins

Homosexual activists have never made secret the fact that their ultimate goal is to achieve legal marriage status, identical to that conferred on heterosexual married couples. These activists have always taken a step-at-a-time approach to reach their final goal - legal and social acceptance of their relationships.

As stated in the homosexual newspaper, Capital Xtra (March 17, 2000):

Gay marriage has by now become so much part of the official homosexual agenda that to breathe a word against it is to commit heresy.

At the Senate Committee hearings on Bill C-23 on May 19, 2000, one of the witnesses was lawyer, David Corbett, legal counsel for the homosexual organization, Foundation for Equal Families. Mr. Corbett had appeared on behalf of the organization in the Supreme Court of Canada hearing in M and H (in which it decided that homosexual/lesbian partners should receive equal benefits to those of heterosexual common-law couples). At that hearing, Mr. Corbett stated:

… Our sense is that Parliament will leave this [the definition of legal marriage] to the courts because it is a contentious issue.

… We have told the Justice Ministry that they have given us an easy target now and a clear motivation to commence a marriage lawsuit. I am quite certain that it will be commenced by someone over the course of the next 12 to 18 months.

The 12 to 18 months time limit suggested by Mr. Corbett was a gross under estimation. In fact, the homosexual activists, even before Bill C-23 passed into law in June, began their final assault on traditional marriage (the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others). For example, in early May, several pairs of homosexual activist couples applied to the Toronto City Clerk for a marriage licence. These individuals were led by Ontario Assistant Crown Attorney, Michael Leshner who, in 1992, had won survivor pension benefits for his male partner in an Ottawa Human Rights Commission hearing. Instead of refusing Mr. Leshner's application, however, the City Clerk referred the matter to the Ontario Superior Court for a ruling. This was done on the grounds that the Supreme Court of Canada's decision on M and H and the legislation (Bill 5) by the Ontario government in response to M and H, to amend 67 provincial statutes last November, according to Toronto's legal advisor, had given rise to confusion and ambiguity which needed to be clarified by the court.

The homosexuals were ecstatic with this decision by the City of Toronto to seek a ruling on whether homosexual partners can enter into a legal marriage, because the legal bills will be covered by the Toronto taxpayers, rather than by the homosexual activists who are pushing for this monumental change.

Not to be outdone, a lesbian couple, one of whom is Cynthia Callahan, who sits on the Board of Directors of the homosexual lobby group, Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere (EGALE), applied for a marriage licence in Victoria, BC. The NDP government was quick to act in support of her application. The BC Attorney General Andrew Petter immediately issued a statement supporting the right of same-sex couples to marry. He then called upon federal Minister of Justice, Anne McLellan, to amend the law to allow same-sex couples to enter into a lawful marriage. Mr. Petter next announced that his NDP government was going to the Supreme Court of BC for a declaration that homosexual couples can marry. EGALE then promptly announced it was filing a petition on the issue with the court to support the BC government's application.

This critical issue of what constitutes a valid marriage in Canada has now landed in the courts, which may do an end run around an elected Parliament and pronounce that in the name of "equality," homosexual lovers have the capacity to enter in to a legally recognized union. If so, Canada will be the first country in the world to do so.

Some foreign jurisdictions, such as Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands and France, and most recently, the state of Vermont, have allowed legal registrations of same-sex couples that approximate legal marriage. The Vermont law, for example, creates a classification that grants a long list of rights to homosexual/lesbian partners who enter into a civil union. It should be pointed out, however, that the Vermont legislation, passed after the decision by the Vermont Supreme Court, does not recognize the union as a marriage (the relevant statute emphatically affirms that marriage is a union between a man and a woman). Instead, the legislation, although it does not classify same-sex unions as a "marriage", gives such couples all the rights and responsibilities of married couples.

Background to the Marriage Law In Canada

When Canada entered into Confederation in 1867, the statute establishing the constitutional structure of Canada, the British North America Act (BNA -- now referred to as the 1867 Constitution Act ) divided the right to legislate over marriage into federal and provincial jurisdictions. While the federal government, under S.91 of the BNA Act (Constitution Act of 1867), was granted jurisdiction over the capacity to enter into marriage (i.e., had the jurisdiction to decide who was qualified to enter into a valid marriage), S.92 granted jurisdiction to the provinces to determine the formalities (solemnization) of marriage, e.g., obtaining of licences, reading of banns, etc. In this regard, on May 17, 2000, the Alberta Legislature passed into law a private members bill defining marriage by a vote of 32-15. This bill, the Marriage Amendment Act was introduced by Conservative MLA, Victor Doerksen (Red Deer). The difficulty, of course, is that provincial jurisdiction cannot deal with the traditional definition of marriage because such a definition is a matter of federal jurisdiction.

The standard or traditional definition of marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, was determined by the British House of
Lords in 1866 in the case of Hyde v Hyde. Because no one has ever considered marriage to be anything else, the federal Parliament has never passed legislation defining legal marriage. In fact, the only federal legislation actually relating to marriage occurred in 1990, and it only dealt with the very limited issue of the degree of affinity (relationship by marriage) and consanguinity (kinship) permissible to constitute a legal marriage (i.e., which persons related to each other can enter into a legal marriage).

On June 8, 1999, the House of Commons did pass a resolution related to the protection of legal marriage, which stated (See Reality, " Parliament Upholds Traditional Marriage," July/August, 1999, p. 1):

That, in the opinion of this House, it is necessary, in light of public debate around recent court decisions, to state that marriage is and should remain the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, and that Parliament will take all necessary steps to preserve this definition of marriage in Canada

During that debate, Minister of Justice, Anne McLellan, fervently stated that her Liberal government was in complete support of the common-law decision in Hyde v Hyde, that marriage was a union of one man and woman to the exclusion of all others, and that this definition was considered clear law by Canadians, academics and the courts.

If a court should subsequently decide otherwise, i.e., that same-sex couples can enter into a legal marriage, who believes that Ms. McLellan would challenge the court's new interpretation of marriage?

Private Members' Bills
In view of these developments, several federal MPs have been frantically trying to preserve the traditional definition of marriage by way of private members bills.

Federal Bills
Liberal MP, Tom Wappell, has made many attempts to bring in an amendment to the Marriage Act to restrict it to the traditional one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Liberal MP, Steve Mahoney, introduced a similar private members bill (Bill C-463) on March 28, 2000, as did Canadian Alliance MP, Jim Pankiew (Bill C-460). Mr. Pankiew's bill included an S.33 (notwithstanding clause) provision to protect the definition of marriage should a judicially active court decide that a legal marriage includes homosexual partners.

Unfortunately, private members bills are rarely ever passed into law - only government bills have that advantage. It is difficult to believe that the feminist, homosexual/lesbian sympathizer, Minister of Justice, Anne McLellan, will ever bring in such a bill or allow a notwithstanding clause resolution to be placed before the House of Commons should the court redefine marriage.

What Will the Supreme Court of Canada Decide?

It's not too difficult to predict what the Supreme Court of Canada will eventually rule on the legal definition of marriage. We know that this court has an undeniable bias in favour of homosexual rights. Madame Justice Claire L'Heureux Dubé, for example, has proudly claimed her bias in a number of public speeches she gave last year. Other Supreme Court of Canada judges such as Mr. Justice Iacobucci and Madame Justice Louise Arbour regard themselves as "progressives" and will undoubtedly support homosexual marriage (Madame Justice Arbour, the mother of several children, has so little regard for the institution of marriage that she has never bothered to marry the father of her children, from whom she is now separated). They will invariably state that the common law of over 100 years ago is long outdated and must change with the times. Five of the other judges, Louis LeBel, Michael Bastarache, John Major, Ian Binnie and Chief Justice Beverley McLaughlin might well be persuaded to go along with these progressives (their egos will be stroked by the fact that they would be "leading" the world with a "first" if they did so). Mr. Justice Gonthier, however, will probably not back the judicial activists to change the definition of marriage since his was the only dissent in the May 1999 M and H decision which gave homosexual/lesbian partners benefits equal to legally married couples. This latter case, of course, has set the stage for our present problems.

This revolutionary decision by the unelected judges will be a political one - because it will depend on how they believe Canadians will react to such a decision. If they think they can get away with this final assault, they will.

We can now expect an intense campaign to soften public opinion in favour of legal homosexual/lesbian marriage. The media, fiercely partisan re homosexual demands, will shortly get into full gear on this.

Please respond immediately when this issue is raised on phone-in radio programs, television programs and in the print media. Only with consistent genuine resistance to legal marriage for homosexuals/lesbians will this initiative be stopped.

We are in the final stages of this battle. One sure way to lose it, is to disengage; we must fight on with prayers and perseverance and action.

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