By G.D. Maxwell
Why just two?
Why not three or four or more?
If it’s a question of changing times, more enlightened thinking, liberal acceptance of things different, tolerantly embracing those formerly labeled abnormal, a victory for inclusiveness, why just two?
On Tuesday, the Ontario Court of Appeal rewrote the provincial law on marriage. Without giving dilettantes at Queen’s Park time to waffle and evade, the court ordered a change to the rules of marriage in Ontario to force the province to recognize, permit and register marriages of men to men and women to women.
The Ontario court was following the leads of B.C. and Quebec but upping the ante. Courts in both of those provinces handed down similar rulings but gave their provincial legislatures time to dither and procrastinate and argue about rewriting their laws. The Ontario justices, in a swift and decisive, not to say pharoanic move, said "Let it forever be so!" and wham-bam thank you Sir, it was done. The Michaels trotted down to the Justice of the Peace and champagne corks were a-poppin’ all over the place.
Having no particular affinity for the institution of marriage, I couldn’t really care one way or another if men are allowed to marry other men and women are allowed to marry other women. I chalk it all up to the misery loves company school of thought. If they thought it was a struggle to get married, wait until they battle their way through divorce.
I think it would be a much greater step forward if same-sex people agreed to abandon the word ‘gay’ for something more truly descriptive of their collective lifestyles and let it drift back into common, nonsexual usage. If they want to get married, whatever. They’ll look just as silly doing the Chicken Dance as heterofolk.
But the ruling is, well, weird. The court said the definition of marriage in Ontario shall henceforth be "...the voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others."
Why just two?
Why exclusion?
No, really, I’m serious.
The court had the vision to see beyond the centuries-old Common Law definition of marriage being between a man and a woman but they simply took for granted that marriage has been and shall always be between only two people. Not so much a union as a merger, a joining of forces to exclude, maybe even to wage war against, all others. Yet, the decision hinged on the constitutional right under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to equality. It emphasized the ‘dignity’ of individuals. Not just two individuals.
It also shot down the old chestnut about marriage being all about procreation. Having children the natch’l way is not, at least in Ontario, considered a pillar of marriage. "Importantly, procreation and child-rearing are not the only purposes of marriage, or the only reason why couples choose to marry," reads the decision. Love triumphs over loins. Now if we could just strike the word bastard from common usage, at least in any meaning other than a mean-spirited, unkind, cantankerous old-fart sort of mentality, e.g., Ralph Klein’s a real bastard.
There’s that ‘couple’ thing again, though.
So, if marriage is about individual dignity and not about producing more humans, why are we so hung up on numbers? And does this irrational fixation on coupling add fuel to the them-us dichotomy that so infuses modern culture? Wouldn’t opening up the definition of marriage even further foster a larger ‘us’, a more inclusive culture of caring and nurturing? If we sought not to exclude all others, might we not move even further toward the kinder, gentler nation we like to think of ourselves as?
The new dawn of marriage in Canada hasn’t taken sex out of the equation, it’s just further restricted the whole question. If marriage now embraces sex of the hetero and homo varieties, it excludes no-sex, all-sex and variable-sex unions. In other words, it’s still stuck in one-on-one couplings. What do you call three people living together in a loving relationship? Four? Half a dozen?
Deviant? Unnatural? Institutional? Okay, so what if these people cast their fortunes together, buy a house, share expenses, care for each other, go to the movies together, vacation together, purchase cars and boats and plasma TVs together, make lifelong commitments to each other. They’re not entitled to surviving-spouse benefits. They can’t be covered under one of the other spouses’ employment benefits programs. Yet, by pooling their lives together, they tread more gently on the earth. Six people in one house versus six people in three houses would have an interesting impact on urban sprawl, eh? What about their dignity?
Boy, you think that bastard Ralph "Notwithstanding Clause" Klein has problems with same-sex marriages, he’d really go ballistic about this notion.
And, while it’s offered in a thought-provoking, column-filling kind of way, let’s not be too quick to dismiss the whole idea. Much has been written in the past decade trying to divine what lies in store for society as the baby boomers shuffle their way into self-absorbed dotage. Never in history have so many become so old all at the same time. Geezer power is about to ramp up an order of magnitude or two.
If the rugged individuals of the baby boom generation are anything, it’s collective. Almost tribal. As our children get fed up with us and finally have the opportunity to leave home, move far away and find convenient excuses to avoid visiting, we’ll no doubt seek out others of our ilk to relive shared experiences, Woodstock, possess decriminalized amounts of marijuana together – though where we’re going to score it without the kids around is beyond me, beat each other to the punch in naming old Star Trek reruns within the first five seconds of them coming on the shared plasma TV, and doing what we’ve done better than any generation to ever despoil planet Earth: Bitch, Bitch, Bitch!
They say Alzheimer’s eats away at an individual’s most recent memories, leaving them only with ancient remembrances. At an eldercare facility in Toronto for people of the Jewish persuasion, the staff struggles with a ward full of holocaust survivors who currently believe they are once again in concentration camps. It makes for difficult shower days.
Imagine the aging boomers. With no short-term memories to speak of anyway, those of us stricken with Alzheimer’s will be left with... what? Vague and idealistic memories of communal living. Endless arguments about who didn’t wash their dishes, who ate the last of the organic jalapeño-lime Doritos, who hid the rolling papers. For the love of God, let us live together. It seems like the only humane thing to do. At least for everyone else.
