Gay Marriage In Canada Preserved!

[bjarvis]

The House of Commons in the federal Parliament of Canada voted at 3:25 PM this afternoon on a resolution whether to revisit the issue of gay marriage. It would not have affected marriage per se, but could have opened the door to a renewed long & painful debate.

The vote was 175 to 123 against re-opening discussion. Gay marriage as an issue for Parliament is closed.

PS. Hmm... seven abstentions. I wonder who...

Comments

Re: bill C38

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

don't tell me - let me guess - you don't live in a constitutional monarchy, do you?

How do you suppose that legislation passed when, say, King George IV, or William IV, was enforced when Victoria came to the throne? Or even legislation passed when one king is on the throne is enforced in the next reign? References to the monarch, be that person male or female, continue to be references to the monarch. References to the Crown are references to the Crown.

Dimwit.

And while we're at it, there was NO direct reference in the statutes to the gender of marital partners, until the Civil Marriage Act in 2005. Previous definition came from a legal ruling of Lord Penzance, in a polygamy/ divorce case in England in 1866:

I conceive that marriage [...] may for this purpose be defined as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.

because 1866 was before Canadian confederation, this ruling entered our common law. However, it's judge-made law, and susceptible to judicial overruling, and indeed was so overruled on a Charter basis in 2003. [notice that it had already been abrogated by divorce legislation decades earlier: Lord Penzance defines marriage as for life.]

But I don't expect anyone playing games with gender of nouns and pronouns to appreciate that.

with apologies to Brian for cluttering up his blog.