In marriage, common good outweighs rights of Individuals

By ARCHBISHOP TERRENCE PRENDERGAST

An extraordinary thing is happening in Canada. We are allowing four false assumptions to paralyse us at a moment of great importance, when the foundation of our society is about to be radically changed.

False assumption 1:

Everyone accepts the redefinition of marriage - no debate.

False assumption 2:

We are powerless - the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been invoked and the Supreme Court of Canada has spoken.

False assumption 3:

The rights of churches have been protected and therefore they have nothing more to say.

False assumption 4:

Those who object are bigots who hate gays and lesbians.

Those statements are untrue, but they are exerting a great deal of power at the moment. Intelligent inquiry and thoughtful reflection on the effect of this change on our Canadian society is being stifled under a blanket marked "prejudice."

But we must have the discussion. Marriage is the basis of the family, which is our nation's fundamental building block. Marriage as the committed union of one man and one woman - and the family unit born of marriage - is an indispensable human and social institution not just in Canada, but throughout the world. It is much older than our Constitution or our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We have to know what we are doing when our Canadian Parliament votes on a bill to define marriage as the union of two adults.

Now is the time to dig under that "equality rights" sign recently planted in

front of the Marriage License Bureau and see what is really happening to

people's rights. The difference between the union of one man and one woman,

and the union of two women or two men, is so vast that we must talk about it

openly.

There are human-rights laws which say: Men and women must be paid the same wage for the same work; an employer may not refuse to hire someone because of skin colour; landlords may not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. These decisions uphold the rights of the individual and at the same time strengthen Canadian society. They encourage us to recognize the humanity of the other person. And they do not distort reality.

In the matter of same-sex unions, however, the statement being made is simply not true. It is a distortion of reality. The committed union of two people of the same sex is not the same human reality as the committed union of one man and one woman.

Same-sex union is not a physical union that transmits human life, producing children. Same-sex union is not the joining of two complementary natures that complete each other. Simply stated, same-sex union is not marriage.

Marriage is the lifelong union of two people who complement and complete each other so much that the language of marriage includes the phrase "two becoming one." Marriage is the social institution intended for the conception, nurture and protection of children. It is true that not every marriage is healthy and not every family is happy.  That, too, is a human reality.

A same-sex union brings many things, including a sexual partner and economic benefit-sharing. By its very nature, however, it can never yield the ultimate expression of physical union between a man and a woman, the birth of a child.

In marriage, husband and wife form a committed partnership to care for the children they create through their love. In a same-sex union, children can be deprived of their simple natural right to live with both their birthparents in one family. In the concern to ensure equality rights for adults, we create two classes of children: those who have the potential to live with both parents in a single-family unit, and those who do not.

As a social institution, marriage as we know it is concerned with the common good, not individual rights. Same-sex unions, however, are totally concerned with the rights, wants and desires of individuals. To fulfil a particular desire on the part of some adults, a bill is being introduced in the Parliament of Canada which reshapes the fundamental building block of our society and absolutely deprives some children of their basic human right to live in a family with both father and mother.

We can do better than this. As Canadians, we do not believe that the wants and needs of adults are intrinsically more valuable than the rights of children. We value the elements of our society that contribute to the common good, and we are willing to bring our individual rights into the arena of common good. This cannot be achieved by rushing a bill through Parliament and binding elected representatives to any form of party solidarity.

Most Rev. Terrence Prendergast, SJ, is Archbishop of Halifax.

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Toronto Star - Dec. 15, 2004 

What's wrong with a referendum?  RICHARD GWYN

In recent years, the idea has gained currency that Canadians are no longer the self-deprecatory, cap-doffing, shoe-scuffling political passives they always thought they were but have become self-confident individualists,  scornful of hierarchies and ready to take on any institution or convention.

Political writer Peter C. Newman first expressed this notion in his 1998 book, Canadian Revolution: From Deference To Defiance. Pollster Michael Adams repeats it in his current book Fire And Ice about Canada-U.S. differences. I've always been suspicious of this analysis. It too conveniently tells people what they'd like to hear told about themselves.

More substantively, actual evidence of Canadian political rebelliousness is exceedingly hard to find. We've elected the Liberals four times in a row, three of these being majority victories with a record fourth in the bag until the sponsorship scandal popped out into the open.

For a time, during the Reform/Alliance era, we actually had an ideological choice. That's all over now. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has properly read the entrails of the last election and is out to make the Conservatives electable by making them indistinguishable from the Liberals.

Canada isn't really a democracy. We have the trappings - elections, parties, elected MPs, a Commons, a free press and the rest. And public opinion can make itself felt, as in the decision not to join in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as in the hurling of more or less unlimited amounts of money at medicare. But we are really a guided democracy - guided from the top downward, no differently from the 19th century when the Family Compact told us what to do.

The key democratic instrument that we lack is public debate. The cut and thrust of argument. The contestation of strongly held, contrary opinions.  The clash of ideas, and of biases and prejudices. All of this we recoil from. It's divisive. It may leave bruises, even wounds. Almost worse, it can be unseemly. The more ordinary people take part in public debate the more likely the unsayable will be said.

I've long thought that the best illustration of the real nature of Canadian politics was that panel of Dalton Camp, Eric Kierans and Stephen Lewis on CBC Radio's This Country in the Morning. It was the most popular, the longest-running, political panel in our broadcasting history. It appealed because of the personal attractiveness and the intelligence of the panelists. But it also contained a key "X" factor. All the three panelists were exactly alike: all were left liberals and soft nationalists. As was the host, Peter Gzowski. It was debate without edge or bite - the perfect Canadian debate.

A current example is illuminating. Alberta Premier Ralph Klein has proposed that a national referendum, and therefore a national debate, should be held on the issue of same-sex marriages. In response, nearly everyone is aghast.  Shocked and horrified, in other words, that Canadians should have a chance to discuss a public policy issue that more people feel more strongly about than any other in a long time, perhaps - if the number of times the topic comes up spontaneously in private conversations is a fair measure - all the way back to Canada-U.S. free trade.

It is understandable that politicians, Conservative Harper no less than

Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, are aghast. They'd lose control. What's truly revealing is that the press, normally passionate about everything being debated, is equally aghast. The Star, a couple of centimetres to the left of centre, and The Globe and Mail, which is a demi-centimetre to the right of centre - in Canadian politics the equivalent of a chasm apart - are each aghast, and each equally so.

A referendum might "sound democratic" declared the Star, but referendums "do not allow for nuanced consideration of complex issues. They are subject to manipulation by special interests." As if special interests are ever silent and as if any issue does not ultimately involve a Yes or a No. The Globe proclaimed that Klein was indulging his "mischievous streak" and that a subject so delicate should never be "placed in the hothouse of a referendum campaign." The Star added the ultimate unanswerable put-down: Referendums are American.

A national debate on same-sex marriages would certainly test our mettle. But do the Star and the Globe, and Harper and Martin and, by all appearances,  the entire chattering class, really believe that ordinary Canadians are incapable of discussing difficult and delicate issues without tearing the nation apart? It is virtually certain the same-sex side would win. But wouldn't we learn a lot in the process about the issue itself and about ourselves?

The inevitable conclusion: Our press and our politicians don't want a democracy but a guided democracy - guided, that's to say, by themselves.

Richard Gwyn's column appears Wednesdays and Sundays