20 Years of Same Gender Marriage in Canada

 

Anne and Elaine Vautour take their wedding vows in 2001 before Rev. Brent Hawkes with the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto. Richard Lautens/Brad Salavi

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;  it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. I Corinthians 13: 1-7 NRSVue 

When I heard that yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of same-gender marriage in Canada I was somewhat surprised that it had been that long. Canada was the fourth country in the world to legalize equal marriage and while this decision certainly came amidst opposition from some quarters. There were rallies against it, some of them large. Journalist Michael Coren, now a strong supporter of the LGBTQ2S community spoke at a couple of them and raised the spectre of legalized polygamy, ironically never an issue except in a Mormon cult in British Columbia. 

You may recall that in fact the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto was the site of the first legally recognized same-sex marriages in Canada, four years before the legislation of 2005. On January 14 2001,Rev. Brent Hawkes, the church's pastor, officiated wedding ceremonies for two couples: Joe Varnell and Kevin Bourassa, and Anne and Elaine Vautour. These marriages were performed using a legal loophole called the reading of the banns, an ancient Christian tradition, as same-sex couples were not yet permitted to obtain marriage licenses from municipal clerks. While the marriages were initially not registered by the province, they were later recognized after a court battle. Is there such a thing as "virtuous deviousness?" 

Many Christian denominations and groups are still strongly opposed to same-gender marriage, including the Roman Catholic church. The United Church immediately endorsed the 2005 legislation but it began the discussion well before this decision. I attended the General Council of the UCC in 1992 and asked to be placed on the working group discussing what was then called same-gender unions because gay marriage wasn't legal. Over the years I had moved from being opposed to ambivalent and I wanted to be part of the discussion. 

This working group included people with a variety of outlooks, including vocal opposition. Our discussion was honest and sometimes heated but also prayerful. In the end we recommended to the larger assembly that because the Sessions (spiritual oversight committees) of local congregations had responsibility to regulate worship services in their communities of faith it would be left to them to decide whether same-gender unions would be blessed. Clergy would not be required to act against their conscience. It was a compromise and a beginning.

I was involved in discussions and decisions in several of the congregations I served and I'm still digging out buckshot fired my way from those who were opposed. One young family with the dad from an evangelical family left one of those congregations in disgust because it was against the bible. I know that his former denomination did not ordain women on supposed biblical grounds yet the couple was married by my female predecessor and his kids were baptized by her. Hmm. 

Most of us know same-gender couples today, some legally married and, lo and behold, they experience the highs and lows heterosexual couples experience in relationships of commitment. The first couple married under the legislation have actually been together for more tha 40 years. I worked with two married same gender couples on staff in congregations and one has been together "in sickness and in health" for decades. 

The way I see it, we should celebrate commitment and fidelity in relationships and recognize that equal marriage can be an aspect of this. Love is patient and kind.