It’s been a tough week in US politics. I spent 45 minutes trying to think of something worth writing yesterday and came up empty. I’ve felt overwhelmingly paralyzed in the wake of events in Tucson. But, today I found a celebration that I thought was worth sharing.
In Canada, the first two same-sex couples to be married in the country (and in North America) are celebrating their ten year anniversary:
Two same-sex Canadian couples who made international headlines and North American history by being the first to be legally married, will renew their vows, along with 50 others, in a 10th-anniversary celebration Friday.
Joe Varnell and Kevin Bourassa, along with Anne and Elaine Vautour, were the first same-sex couples to be married in Toronto at Riverdale’s Metropolitan Community Church on Jan. 14, 2001.
Since then, same-sex marriage has been upheld as a constitutional right across Canada. It has also become legal in several other countries and states.
2001 wasn’t all that long ago, but it can be challenging to remember just how courageous and groundbreaking this act was. There were the predictable influx of death threats, protests, and media attention — the priest who performed the ceremony, Rev. Brent Hawkes, had to wear a bullet proof vest, for goodness sake.
But in addition to all of that, there was the sheer repudiation of the respective couples’ relationships themselves. Arguments ran wild about how the union of gay couples would corrupt and destroy the very institution of marriage itself. No small amount of pressure to place on two couples who simply want to commit one another’s lives to their respective partners’.
And thank goodness they did go through with it. In many respects, this event was the tipping point in a series of dominoes that fell throughout the country and continued all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada. As we stand here ten years later, I think it’s pretty clear that the institution of marriage is no more in danger of extinction or corruption than it was back in 2001.
Indeed, statistics seem to point to the exact opposite conclusion. And because there isn’t anything new out there that I can find, I’m going to quote a post I wrote on this site one-year ago (almost to the date) on the issue:
A recent study from professor emeritus Anne-Marie Ambert for the Vanier Institute for the Family shows that divorce rates in Canada are down significantly from their peak in 1987, as the below graph from HRSDC demonstrates.
The drop in Canadian divorce rates between the late 1980s/1990s and present is less interesting to me vis-a-vis this discussion than is to note that Ambert’s study and the latest numbers from Statistics Canada place current rates of divorce in Canada at approximately 38%, as compared to 2003 rates of 35.3%. At a time when Canada’s overall population grew by approximately 5% between 2003-2008, those numbers strike me as statistically insignificant.
And what happened smack in the middle of that time frame? That’s right, on July 20, 2005 same-sex marriage was legalized in Canada.
The take home message? There might not be any reliable data demonstrating that legalizing same-sex marriage strengthens the institution of marriage by reducing rates of divorce, but there is reliable data that demonstrates legalizing same-sex marriage does not weaken the institution of marriage by increasing rates of divorce.
So a hearty thanks and well-wishes to Joe Varnell, Kevin Bourassa, Anne and Elaine Vautour on the ten anniversary of their respective marriages and to Rev. Brent Hawkes for his part in performing the ceremonies. We are indebted to and better of for your courage, perseverance, and love.
Mali Hawthorne 
Snorkle 
b 
areawoman 
Kazzy 
David 
Amy Tuteur, MD 
darlene
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So to save marriage, we must follow the advice of the producers and make it gay?
I’m fine with that.
Marriage underwent a *HUGE* redefinition in the 70′s and 80′s. God only knows how many children were damaged in the wake of it.
These kids grew up and hammered out a new definition for themselves with the rubble of their own parents’ multiple marriages.
Good for them. We are all better off for them being better than their parents were.
Marriage underwent a *HUGE* redefinition in the 70?s and 80?s.
I’m curious if you could speak to this and flesh it out a bit. I know what I think you mean. But I’d like to hear what you mean in your own words.
Well, once upon a time, marriage was, in theory, a bargain.
The man would trade some amount of food and shelter in exchange for sex and reasonable assumptions of paternity of any children born. Love wasn’t really that much of an issue to the point where marriages were as likely as not to be arranged by parents (see, for example, Fiddler on the Roof for the dynamic that existed between Tzeitel, Motel, and Lazar Wolf… we, being modern folks post 60′s know that Tzeitel and Motel ought to get married!!! *dUh*). Divorce was damn near unheard of… only the French got divorced. There was a *HUGE* stigma to divorce. Huge. Like, you got divorced? You have to move because you’d be otherwise shunned. If you were lucky, you could move somewhere and claim to be a widow and MAYBE accepted by the new community. Maybe. The stigma was just that great.
Well, the personhood of women happened and that screwed everything up. Well, as society evolved and absorbed the lessons of feminism, marriage stopped being *PURELY* an economic bargain made by parents pimping out daughters to the best available John (will she be fed? housed? rarely beaten? Listen to the matchmaker song!) but an economic bargain made by the women themselves in response to the most skilled suitors. Divorce still carried a *HUGE* stigma… but folks got married, had children, and discovered that, for better or worse, parents were somewhat more dispassionate when it came to making these economic decisions…
Which brings us to 99.44% effective birth control.
Once children were no longer certain to happen when a woman married a man, the economic bargain became exceptionally moot for *HUGE* swathes of the “respectable” community. Hell, even if you *HAD* kids, you no longer had seven. You had two if you were Protestant and three if you were Catholic. This changed the dynamic and potential costs of divorce enormously and once we reached a tipping point where everybody knew someone who got divorced (and was better off for doing so), the stigma pretty much evaporated entirely.
Which brings us to the 80′s when it seemed like everybody’s parents were getting divorced. (I was in Middle and High school… it felt like every freakin’ month someone would come in absolutely wrecked.)
Marriage stopped being an economic bargain and became something that two people who loved each other and wanted to have children did and that became something that two people who loved each other and if kids happened, great!, did and *THAT* became something that two people who loved each other did.
And seeing soooooo many marriages end in screaming fights taught a lot of kids a lot of lessons about being a lot wiser about making the devil’s bargain of marriage. Ubiquitous birth control (and abortion) gave an out for a huge number of folks when, in the past, they’d have had a hasty elopement followed by the first baby being born two or three months “premature” (but still full weight! It’s a miracle!) and people who once would have gotten married at 19 were allowed to be people who just broke up at 20. No kids, no foul. Hell, there are even “starter marriages” now. People get married, figure out that 20 year-olds aren’t very good at making long-term predictions, get divorced, no kids, no foul… and, from what I’ve seen, a lot less acrimony than we saw in the 70′s and 80′s. (Seriously, hearing the grown-ups talk about their exes was like listening to New Atheists talk about Christianity.)
And now that marriage is pretty much a “no kids, no foul” kind of relationship, it only makes sense to extend it to homosexuals and, having done so, it *STRENGTHENS* the idea of marriage as a “no kids, no foul” long-term commitment. Indeed, even as the kids of divorce from the 70′s and 80′s are getting married, many are making different mistakes than their parents… and, when it comes to marriage, they’re better at getting out before they wreck the lives of their kids.
Or something like that.
Just to make one note to your entertaining history of marriage and divorce in the last few generations- the nuclear family is also relatively new in a historical sense- it’s only made viable by the industrial revolution. So, in Europe, it becomes prevalent really only in the 1800s, and it could be argued that it becomes prevalent in the US only in the 20th century- mainly, the period between the world wars and really takes off after WWII.
Okay, so we seee nuclear families develop, become the norm, and the next generation pioneers a divorce boom. What does this suggest? To me, it suggests that the nuclear family is a sort of pressure cooker- instead of marriage being the business of the extended family, the clan, the larger society, it’s the business of a handful of individuals who are expected to have all of their emotional needs met by each other for the marriage to be considered “working”. The fact that the first generation raised en masse in this situation had trouble when it came time for them to figure out what marriage is about isn’t terribly surprising. And, annecdotally, I’m often struck by how stiflingly co-dependent most marriages still seem to be, at least among the people we know. So, I think the taboos did prevent say my grandparents from getting divorced (but not my parents)- on the other hand, my grandparents were the first generation in my bloodline to live in a nuclear family, and the way they did so would have resulted in divorce if the taboos weren’t there.
I had Maribou read this post and my comment and, halfway through the comment, she said “you’re trapped in the 19th Century” and I told her “Yeah, Rufus covered that” and she said “no wonder you give fewer speeches at dinner!”
She thinks all y’all rock.
All y’all do, of course.
I stopped reading your lengthy comment when you used Fiddler on the Roof as an example.
Seriously?
You look to some Hollywood artifice as an approximation of some marriage reality?
How foolish.
Someone doesn’t like showtunes!
Who sees “Fiddler on the Roof” and thinks Hollywood instead of Broadway? And the story of Tzeitel, Motel, and Lazar Wolf is almost unchanged from the original Sholom Aleichem. Though I suppose that undercuts Jaybird’s point, since almost all of Tevye’s daughters married for love way back in the 19th Century: to a poor tailor, to a radical that was exiled to Siberia, and even to a goy. Of the two who got mixed up with rich men, one was miserable and the other killed herself.
I love my Dad who is twice a widower and twice a divorcee as well as a newlywed.
So many weddings. I was even at both of my Brother’s weddings (Only one brother.)
Not saying you shouldn’t, dude. Not saying you shouldn’t.
Weddings are, I’ve found, a good way to spend a Saturday. If jeans are allowed. (I’ve no problem with wearing a tie. I just don’t want to have to wear khakis.)
I’m not saying i wouldn’t marry the one I’ve been with these past three years.
But currently the government says we can’t. Not because were gay but because she is still technically married to the gentlemen who used to live in the house we moved into 12 days ago and is currently living in the apartment we were in.
We rented one truck and helped each other move.
The divorce is coming.
After the “you know, this is none of my business” shrug, I’ll say that that strikes me as infinitely healthier than the shit I saw go down in the 80′s.
Good on you.
Jaybird, thanks for the great laughs today. The Hitler/Palin comparison had me laughing uproariously all afternoon. Just loved it. I haven’t read the subsequent comments but I’d bet my life at least one person thought you were serious.
Yikes, Pirate! Are you carrying? Or is it, are you packing? As in Glock…..well, you know what I mean.
Nope,
While I’m not a gun control supporter I don’t like guns or non-toy weapons.
The world is so much less dangerous than some think it.
“[T]he priest who performed the ceremony, Rev. Brent Hawkes, had to wear a bullet proof vest, for goodness sake.”
I am always grateful for those who had the courage to stand up for love and commitment in the face of such violence. I was just at Harvey’s in the Castro in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, having a Bloody Mary after a successful New Years’ Eve celebration. All the photos documenting the gay rights’ movement around the restaurant made me feel a little inadequate since I live a comparably frivolous life. Then again, those people fought so people could be free to live frivolous lives.
Happy Anniversary to those who led the way for my husband and I, married in Alberta a little over 5 years ago.
Yay!
Hopefully, my own nation and home state of Montana will get around to recognizing our marriage before our our daughter grows up and starts asking questions!
“Hooray! We’re Gay! It’s Been Ten Years, Today!”
Scott, is this exclamation to be sung to the music of, “The sun has gone to bed and so must I”–you know that tune from The Sound of Music.”? The words perfectly match that “Farwell” tune.
Just curious.
*tosses some confetti* Good on the dear Cananadians. It’s only every second phone call with my Mum that she slyly tries suggesting I should move the hubby to Canada now that he and I are legally wed there (sly dame, and she’s the American parent too).
For a post on same-sex marriage, the comments have been downright laconic.
To stir the pot a bit: I submit that the problem with Canada is not that they do have same-sex marriage, but rather that they don’t have the First Amendment, a functional equivalent thereof, or a political culture that would guarantee as much.
So the Christians in Canada know better than to speak out lest the Human Rights Tribunals start holding them down and smearing “SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!” in their faces?
I’ve gotta say, as a materialist atheist (redundant?), I’ve never been able to really tell the difference between public displays of religion and speech.
They both look like white guys in a suit yelling.
I guess it would be possible to be a nihilist atheist or an atheist who is skeptical about the existence of the material universe, or you might think that God is composed of material (Is that some variety of gnosticism?) so the label “materialist atheist” is not redundant I think.
Humm good try Jason but I think you’re off. Yes Canadians don’t have a hard core first amendment culture (and I’ll step down to no one in my hatred of the HRC tribunal clowns) but despite the tribunals efforts most of the country remains free of their depredations. I don’t think Canada has the religious culture and especially the political-religious culture that the US has that is necessary to sustain concerted anti-gay policies in government. Hell, most of the Canadian right wing could pass for blue dogs if they were in the States. Canada is just to the left of the US socially. Though oddly enough it’s looking more and more like Canada has ended up to the right of the US economically.
Hooray for Canadians! Jason and I were married in Canada back in 2003, a little more than a month after the final court decision. I planned the wedding because Jason was in France. We intended it to be a fun get-together of brothers and friends, with some nice food and gambling afterward. The chaplain we found to conduct the wedding had different ideas, though, and thank goodness he did. The ceremony was beautiful, meaningful, and memorable. Jason read a wonderful Cummings poem, and I read a very short story entitled “Boegiboe.”
So, here we are, together. We’d probably be here anyway, even without the help of our northern neighbors. Would we be the same? It’s hard to say. Would we be parents? Hard to say. The effects of us getting married on our extended family were vague yet palpable. Their support has been important, especially in raising our daughter so far. The support comes from divorced parents, married siblings, grandparents now dearly missed. It continues to be a wild ride!
That’s lovely Boe, the Mr. and I had a similar experience (except for starting out intending for it to be fun; the Mr. made it clear early on that the wedding was going to be “serious business” so I never had any illusions).
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