On a steamy Toronto night in the summer of 2002, my father and his girlfriend du jour were suggesting to me, over the course of my graduation dinner, that gay marriage was wrong.
It was unnecessary, redundant, and useless really.
Though my father remained virtually silent on the issue (wisely knowing my wrath would soon follow), while his girlfriend nattered away, his silence was an admission of sorts. After all, he wasn’t disagreeing with her; in fact he was silently nodding his head.
And here she was, between sips of red wine, shrugging her shoulders and asking, “Why do they need to get married anyway? Why can’t they just live together?”
Well, I thought to myself, who the hell are you to tell gay and lesbian couples that they should just live together? Aren’t you the generation that basically wrecked marriage anyway?
Fast-forward a year to Montreal, June, 2003. We were sitting at a friend’s apartment debating the merits of marriage. And not gay marriage, but straight ol’ hetero marriage.
Unsurprisingly to me, most of my friends claimed that it just “wasn’t for them.” One said that she didn’t need a “silly piece of paper to prove her love for someone,” another said that unless she had kids, she didn’t see the point, and even then she looked less than thrilled; while another asked pointedly: “why marry if you are just going to get divorced anyway? How can you look someone in the eyes and say forever when you know it’s a fifty-fifty gamble?”
And there you have it; the mantra of the “echo” generation seems to be that marriage is a sham.
I have a father, a number of temporary “step-mothers,” a stepfather, a mother, a stepbrother, three other siblings etc., etc., and in no way is my case unusual. Nearly all of my childhood friends came from divorced families, and the ones that didn’t soon followed, all the way until New Year’s 2000 when my friend Mark’s parents finally called it quits.
This is not meant to suggest that there are no happy marriages; there are some, maybe a whole 20 per cent of them are happy, if around 50 get divorced and 30 secretly wished they did.
So it is no surprise then that the children of this messy age turned out so damn cynical about this marriage business.
And this makes it all the more ironic that it is the harbingers of the 50 per cent divorce rate; the reason people laugh at the mention of “forever;” who are now trying to tell gays and lesbians that they can’t marry, and all in the name of protecting marriage!
After all, it is older people who tend to be against gay marriage, and one oft-quoted reason is to protect the institution from potential decay.
This is worth repeating.
The institution of marriage in heterosexual baby-boomer hands has delivered young people of my generation a divorce rate of around 50 per cent and a lot of cynical children who spent portions of their youth being shuttled from Monday to Thursday at mum’s, to Friday to Sunday at dad’s.
Gee thanks.
Perhaps older people should think twice about labelling gays and lesbians as matrimonial threats.
And in any case, won’t allowing lesbians and gays to marry strengthen the institution of marriage? After all, it will only result in more people being married.
It will also result in more people respecting the institution of marriage as something just, flexible and capable of meeting the changing needs of Canadians.
When baby boomers needed to get divorced in huge numbers, divorce law rose to meet the challenge.
Now gays and lesbians want to get married in huge numbers, thus marriage law should rise to meet this challenge.
This is not meant to suggest that there is no debate. The legal merits are worth debating and that is why the case is now before the Supreme Court of Canada. In all fairness though, with the separation of church and state, if the right of marriage is extended to one group under the Charter, it must be extended to all persons under the Charter, and those of a specific sexual orientation cannot be discriminated against.
So it should come as no surprise when the Supreme Court of Canada suggests that the proposed marriage bill is constitutional.
If marriage is worth protecting, then it must be a valued institution. Who values that institution more, those who divorced themselves from it in droves, or those who will do anything to be a part of it?
