Fat chance...it's too cold up there for them to pop off their little tank-tops at the parades. 
Posted on 06/23/2003 4:44:33 PM PDT by Clive
The conspiracy theorist in me says that the Liberal government of Canada last week decided not to appeal the legalization of same-sex marriages to the Supreme Court because it feared it would win.
That's right - not afraid to lose, but win. I believe the Liberals were so afraid that the Supreme Court would uphold the traditional heterosexual definition of marriage that they decided to simply not appeal the various lower-court decisions.
My conspiracy theory is rooted in a court case I've written about a few times over the years, the 1995 Egan vs. Canada judgment in which the Supreme Court of Canada drew a line in the sand regarding same-sex marriage, essentially saying that the government could legalize it, but it really wouldn't be marriage.
The case involved James Egan and John Nesbit, a gay couple who claimed to have lived together since 1948. They claimed they were discriminated against because the Old Age Security Act didn't let Nesbit claim a spousal allowance under Egan's old age security benefits.
The Supreme Court ruled in the case that gays and lesbians were protected from discrimination under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But the court also said that Parliament was justified in refusing spousal-pension allowances because marriage is an institution for men and women only.
Indeed, the Supreme Court wrote that "marriage is by nature heterosexual. It would be legally possible to define marriage to include homosexual couples, but this would not change the biological and social realities that underlie traditional marriage."
Ironically, in retrospect, the Supreme Court also said that "marriage has from time immemorial been firmly grounded in our legal tradition, one that is itself a reflection of long-standing philosophical and religious traditions.
"But its ultimate raison d'etre transcends all of these and is firmly anchored in the biological and social realities that heterosexual couples have the unique ability to procreate, that most children are the product of these relationships, and that they are generally cared for and nurtured by those who live in that relationship."
Well, as we all saw over the last little while, those legal traditions apparently weren't so firmly rooted after all, because all it took to uproot them were a few lower-court decisions in B.C., Quebec and Ontario and the government caved without even going to the Supreme Court.
But to do so, those courts had to essentially ignore the Egan ruling.
I've always found that more than a bit bizarre. After all, the 1995 Supreme Court ruling was firmly in the post-charter era and while the case wasn't on gay marriage per se (it was more about gay common-law marriage, if you can see that distinction) the highest court in the land did make a very strong statement on the nature of marriage.
Yet a series of lower courts have basically decided to ignore what the Supreme Court had to say about marriage and forge their own path - one that the Liberals are more than happy to accept, as they get to get their nice progressive definition of marriage while deflecting the flak back on the courts who did the heavy lifting for them.
So let's connect all the dots: In the one court case in which the Supreme Court of Canada had every opportunity to expand the definition of marriage, it steadfastly refused to do so. But for lower courts to expand marriage to include homosexual couples, those courts had to either pretend that the Egan case didn't exist or acknowledge the case but then ignore what the Supreme Court said to instead rely on the all-mighty Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
And the federal government, faced with a handful of appeal court rulings changing the definition of marriage, decides that the issue is not worth taking to the Supreme Court of Canada for a final declarative ruling on what constitutes marriage - the same Supreme Court that eight years ago in the post-Charter era ruled that marriage was exclusively a heterosexual institution. And the Supreme Court can't very well recant its own ruling from just eight years ago, could it?
All the government lawyers would have had to do to win this case is read back the appropriate portions from the Egan ruling and ask the court to uphold that. It would have been the simplest case in the world to win. The Grits decided not to.
It's a conspiracy, I tell you. A conspiracy.
It doesn't.
Fat chance...it's too cold up there for them to pop off their little tank-tops at the parades.
I'm confused by your stance on morality. This is what you said on the other thread:
I don't take sh*t from fascists, anymore...it's one of the privileges of membership in the human race. These disgusting moralizing pukes who claim to want to keep spciety clean are the filthiest swine I have ever had the appalling misfortune to meet.
OK, so which is it ? Why don't gay people have the right to have their revolting lifestyle treated equitably by the government without all the commentary by the "moralizing pukes" as you so eloquently stated.
Or do you switch heads from day to day, one day on the pike, the next day off the pike ?
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