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July 25, 2005
Resign your commission
Should civil marriage commissioners be allowed to withhold their services from whomever they please? Of course they shouldn't. And now that prominent conservative columnist Lorne Gunter has said as much (subscribers only, natch), I'm hoping we might be able to put this persistent non-issue to bed. Says Gunter:
I'm about to try to explain why it is wrong for Alberta's public marriage commissioners to refuse to perform same-sex civil ceremonies, as the Alberta government said it would permit this week, but right for the Catholic church to deny women the priesthood.
In a nutshell, the difference is the public sphere versus the private. Public marriage commissioners are agents of the state, the Catholic church is not. Public officials ought to be bound by the state's concept — right or wrong — of human rights. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, as a private organization, is free to demand of its members whatever beliefs it deems essential, even if those beliefs are at odds with the public concept of human rights.
…
If the state decides it will authorize new kinds of marriage, its agents may comply or quit. If their consciences dictate otherwise, they must be prepared to suffer the consequences — in this case, the loss of their authority to perform marriages of any kind.
…they should not have the ability to pick and choose among those the state has deemed to have equal rights to marry.
They would not be permitted to refuse to marry interfaith or interracial couples whose rights are guaranteed, so why gays and lesbians?
When you're right, you're right, and this conclusion is bang-on:
The conscience exemptions in the federal same-sex marriage law and in Alberta's marriage regulations are political concessions designed to make an unpopular law easier to sell. They are not really about recognizing religious rights.
Gunter has far more time than I do for the "Christian persecution" refrain. In April he penned a two-column defence of Bishop Fred Henry and took it, I thought, to unjustified depths of doomsayery. Still, the fact is that you don't find too many purple faces in the religious persecution crowd willing to listen to the sort of distinction Gunter makes in his column today (perhaps it's too "finely sliced"?), so I hope they take a few deep breaths and consider it. I think what he's saying is fairly indisputable, and one could convincingly argue that the whole issue is yet another Liberal dupe.
(They might also appreciate this delightful little poem from the inscrutable Jim Bobby, which concludes thusly:
Way off in the future we'll talk of these days
An' laugh at ourselves an' our fears,
When some people thought that marryin' gays
Would turn the whole world inta queers.
But I doubt it.)
Posted by Chris Selley at July 25, 2005 11:44 PM
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Comments
Religious freedom is protected in Canada.
Religious conduct is a different matter, however.
Taking the most extreme example: I may believe that my God wants human sacrifice. That's allowed as I can believe whatever I like. However, should I strive to sacrifice a life, wups - That's illegal.
Imagine a traditionalist muslim man working at a passport office accepting passport applications. A non-muslim women walks up to him for service. He refuses to do so as she isn't wearing proper mulims dress, and isn't escorted.
We'd freak.
Back to topic...
Have these Catholic marriage commisioners been marrying people previously divorced? Tsk, tsk...
Civil marriage isn't recognized by the Catholic Church as valid marriage anyway.
Posted by: Mark [Section 15] at July 26, 2005 01:41 AM
The issue is whether the Marriage Commissioner is a public servant or a free agent who has been granted a certain authority. If the former, then they are obliged to solemnize a Marriage for all comers (subject to the appropriate, and uniformly-applied, restrictions and requirements). If the latter, then the Commissioner is not under such an obligation, and couples will just have to find one that is willing to solemnize their marriage in the way they see fit.
I don't think the issue is absolutely determined after reading the Marriage Act, which authorizes the appointment of Marriage Commissioners, and the Public Service Act, which authorizes the appointment of people to the civil service. The Regulatinons to the Marriage Act clearly contemplate that one can be a Marriage Commissioner without being a public servant. Anyone with better knowledge of just what constitutes a "civil servant" or "public servant" is welcome to comment.
There are two practical matters that I think are more important, at least to those who want a Marriage, as oppossed to a public platform to proclaim their views and castigate those who don't share them. The first is what couple would want a Marriage Commissioner who openly thinks of them and their Marriage as abhorent? There may be the odd case of a small town with only one Marriage Commissioner, but I suspect that is a very rare occurance, and the easy government response is to find someone else who is qualified (as I understand it, the chief qualification to be a Marriage Commissioner is that you were a bagman or hack in your working life...) and will perform the requested ceremonies, whether that be same-sex weddings, bungee weddings, nude scuba weddings or whatever.
The second question is just how fervently a Marriage Commissioner takes his religion? The whole point of being a Marriage Commissioner is to solemnize marriages that are, by definition, taking place outside a church and without the blessing of a formal religion. If I was -say- a devout Catholic, would I not have been taught all through catechism that marriage was a sacrement available only through the Mother Church, and that any other form of cohabitation (much less fornication) was a mortal sin? If so, and I feel my faith very strongly, how can I accept an appointment to the postion of putting legal and social approval on people in an arrangement that I believe to be sinful? I don't get it. I can see Marriage Commissioners not much liking SSM as a matter of personal taste; I can't see them objecting on the basis of strongly-held religious views, unless they belong to the Church of All Marriages Okay Except Gay Marriage. I haven't seen that church, but perhpas someone can point me to it.
Dean
Posted by: DCardno at July 26, 2005 12:03 PM
Dean, looking back on the SSM debate (assuming it's actually done), the only conclusion I can come to is that the Church of All Marriages Okay Except Gay Marriage is the single largest denomination in Canada.
Posted by: Chris Selley at July 26, 2005 12:14 PM