What About the Children?

A friend stopped by my desk the other day, and voiced what may be majority opinion in Canada on the same-sex marriage debate. "The really embarrassing thing is the pathetic quality of the arguments," he said, sadly shaking his head. "On both sides. The whole quality of the debate's been embarrassing, embarrassing to the whole country. It's been just plain stupid."

In early February, the Parliament of Canada will debate legislation to include "same-sex couples" within the law of marriage. Yet the public debate has largely been dominated by radical homosexuals, on one side, and traditional Christians, on the other. Both sides have talked right past each other, and public civility has been caught in a No-Man's Land between.

Nobody wins, if the current debate contributes to a destruction of public civility. Laws multiply, continually and often uselessly, but as Aristotle said, "real legislators concern themselves more with the friendliness of their fellow citizens." No weight of law can outbalance popular resentment.

Canadian homosexuals will win nothing, if most straight Canadians end up seeing same-sex marriages as nothing more than affirmative action for the emotionally challenged.

Conservative Christians will have lost, if non-doctrinaire Canadians come to believe marriage is nothing more than an onerous religious obligation -- one many already ignore.

Both sides, though small minorities, present their positions as non-negotiable: Radical homosexuals using the language of secular constitutional rights, and conservative Christians that of biblical revelation. They are speaking different languages.

However, in the normal course of democratic politics, interest groups (from wine growers to industrialists) present their case for a share of the public pie, normally on the grounds that their good contributes to the public good. The question is, why do both sides of the same-sex marriage debates present unconditional demands? And where is the public good? In the normal course of democratic politics, there is no real constituency for same-sex marriage.

The largest, most authoritative study, the University of Chicago's Social Organization of Sexuality (1994), found that 2.8 per cent of males and 1.4 per cent of females are homosexual. In StatsCan's 2003 Canadian Community Health Survey, just one per cent of Canadians called themselves homosexual, with 0.7 per cent more calling themselves bisexual.

As far as couples go, a 12-city Environics Research Group survey last February found Montreal with the most same-sex couples, at 0.51 per cent, and Hamilton the fewest, at only 0.16 per cent of all couples. The Vanier Institute of the Family report Profiling Canada's Families found the number of same-sex couples nationally to be so insignificant, research director Robert Glossop said, "it could not be measured." So outside a few hundred people in each of a dozen cities, homosexual couples hardly exist.

Homosexual activists have relied on sympathetic judicial activism to get this far (and transforming a fundamental ancient institution is pretty far) because they haven't the numbers for normal democratic give-and-take.

To qualify as a protected category in human rights claims, gay activists have drawn on two thousand years of sometimes bloody persecution, which largely ended 200 years ago. The rhetoric suggests that any failure to institute same-sex marriage will spark a return to the bad old days.

"We can't let our federal government send a message that it's OK to discriminate against lesbian and gay Canadians," say Canadians for Equal Marriage (www.equal-marriage.ca).

"This is not the message we want young Canadians to hear, regardless of their sexual orientation."

In the age of Elton John, Freddy Mercury, Ellen Degeneris and Rosie O'Donnel, however, portraying homosexuals as a persecuted minority cuts any ice only because the rhetoric of victimhood is so deeply engrained. Note the lenient treatment of homosexual parliamentarian Svend Robinson, upon his conviction for theft.

Ken Poppert, publisher of the gay magazine Xtra, bragged in 1995 that homosexuals have better jobs, more income and more political clout than average Canadians. A survey in the U.S. gay magazine, The Advocate, found active gays to have four years more education and twice the income of average Americans. The Chicago survey and other gay-led studies agree that, on average, homosexuals are better educated and wealthier.

All of this is irrelevant, however, when it comes to the question of principle. If homosexual relations are indistinguishable in any relevant manner from heterosexual relations, and if marriage is simply public validation of any emotionally committed relationship, then even if only 65 of Canada's 650,000 homosexuals wish to marry, they would nevertheless have that right. The issue hinges on the question, What is the purpose of marriage?

The bar is higher for conservative Christians, bucking same-sex marriage, and they have failed to jump it.

Homosexual Canadians already have all the practical advantages accruing to common-law heterosexual couples (employment benefits, adoption, immigration), and now seek the final "good" -- public recognition or validation of their relationships. In politics, a special interest group, arguing for a bigger share of a public good, normally torques its arguments.

Evangelical Christians, on the other hand, are in the position of arguing for the public good, yet argue like nothing more than a special interest group.

The Bible may forbid "sodomy." And publicly validating same-sex relations may be another step in suppressing public Christianity (as in Sweden, where Pentecostal pastor Ake Green was jailed a month for preaching against homosexuality). But such a "special interest" has little traction among the residually religious or unchurched. Democratic societies think in terms of competing private interests, and most Canadians assume sufficient room can always be found for competing groups to co-exist.

There are reasons for this biblical narrowness of the current Christian arguments. Conservative Christians worry foremost that people "get right with God," so public policy is a concern only in the context of individual evangelization. Further, though, over the centuries, Protestants have forgotten the Christian natural law tradition, reasoned arguments about the public good -- natural good-- that appeal to the unchurched. So in the same-sex debate, Evangelicals begin to resemble missionaries who fail to learn the local language. That is a failure of charity.

Evangelicals have approached the issue with zeal but few arguments, while the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has made the arguments, but with little zeal.

Two paths of argument have lain open to traditional Christians, both largely ignored: a less effective appeal to public health, and a more relevant explanation of the natural good of traditional marriage.

As the politically incorrect former MP Grant Hill stated in Parliament in 1996, the homosexual lifestyle is rife with HIV, hepatitis, parasites, depression, substance abuse and suicide. Almost a third of young men who accept the orientation will be dead or HIV-positive by 30. So Canadian homosexuals have a life expectancy eight to 20 years less than heterosexuals. These tragic consequences are sometimes acknowledged by gay magazines like Ottawa's Capital Xtra or The Blade.

Some health problems result from promiscuity. The Male Couple study found that 95 per cent of all gay couples and 100 per cent of those longer than five years incorporate "outside sexual activity." A Dutch study (on the low side of such surveys) found gays with partners averaging eight casual partners a year, versus 22 for gays without partners. Lesbians, on the other hand, are slightly more faithful than cohabiting heterosexuals, with only one in five having outside affairs in any given year. Yet in contrast, 77 to 81 per cent of married heterosexual men and 85 per cent of married women remain faithful lifelong.

The public health argument has little traction these days, however. In a hyper-sexualized society, suppression of sexual desire itself seems pathological in the highest degree. So whatever the other threats to health, nothing seems worse than self-denial. And bluntly, people have a right to kill themselves.

The second argument, discounted by the current courts, has the advantage of relevance. Marriage is a public institution, defined by a shared public interest. According to gay activists and a plurality of jurists, its purpose is to validate the emotional attachment of any two people. But this may trivialize it: What public interest is there in private emotional attachments?

The natural purpose of marriage is defined by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in its quiet, largely ignored Dec. 9, 2004, reaction to the Supreme Court reference: "Its purpose is the good of the couple and the procreation and education of children -- and thus necessary for the survival of society. As the committed, stable relationship of a man and a woman, marriage is basic to the stability of society and family life. Insofar as it is a social institution, marriage is concerned with the common good, not individual rights."

Supreme Court Justice Gerard LaForest said as much in the 1995 Egan decision (later ignored by lower courts). The family is "the only unit that regularly expends resources to care for children." So the raison d'etre of marriage, LaForest wrote, ". . . 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."

The mystery in the same-sex marriage debate is its momentum. Homosexuals are just under 3 per cent of the population, versus the roughly 15 per cent of conservative Christians. Conservative gays like John McKellar of the Toronto-based HOPE (Homosexuals Opposed to Pride Extremism) say less than one per cent of homosexuals are politically active, and they are divided, some rejecting marriage altogether as irredeemably heterosexist.

So, with a few thousand proponents (and the same names always reappearing in court actions), from where comes the momentum? Why does same-sex marriage seem inevitable?

Since the early 1990s, the Canadian government itself has funded the legal battle for same-sex rights through its Trudeau-era Court Challenges Program -- in particular, the three 2000 marriage challenges brought by EGALE (Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere) executives in B.C., Ontario and Quebec who are bankrolled by the public purse.

In landmark cases like Mossop, Haig, Egan and M and H, lawyers for the Justice Department, responsible with defending the law, have clearly been lackluster in doing so.

In June, 2003, Ontario judges (like Court of Appeal Chief Justice Roy McMurtry) were photographed partying with gay activists at their victory bash.

This is nothing new. Since the late 1960s, the Canadian government and judiciary has systematically adopted public policies that directly enshrine sexual liberation and indirectly kick the legal supports out from under the natural family -- like no-fault divorce, normalized cohabitation, subsidized daycare and punitive tax regimes.

As a result, an increasing proportion of kids today will grow up with only one parent: 14 per cent of those whose parents were married, 63 per cent of those whose parents cohabited, and almost all of those born to unattached women, said a StatsCan report. Those kids are over twice as likely to flunk out of school, end up in jail, suffer clinical depression, or otherwise become clients of the state.

Longer term, public policy itself has resulted in Canada's looming "demographic winter" -- the slow collapse of public services as the result of low fertility and an aging population. Canadians say they want on average 2.4 children. Yet couples have only 1.5 kids each, just two-thirds of the population replacement rate. When asked why, they say "economics" -- and by far their largest single expense is taxation. Across the developed world, there is a persuasive correlation between taxation and infertility. The median age of the population rose 2.5 years (to 37.5) in the last five years, and by 2030, almost a third of Canadians will be over 65. The problem of saving CPP, OAS and Medicare looms large.

So the support of Canada's political and judicial elites for same-sex marriage is nothing new. It is merely the latest act in their long-term legal transformation of human sexuality from a family duty to an individual right, from a service to the common good to a form of self-expression: Codifying the Sexual Revolution.

Recognition that the 40-year decline of the Canadian family has largely been the consequence of pro-Sexual Revolution public policy gives an added piquancy to the reasoning of Canadian courts for same-sex marriage. Marriage cannot be defined by the potential for children, because "many heterosexual couples don't have children, and many same-sex couples do," the courts have said.

Yet, according to the Vanier Institute, children are "important" to 90 per cent of Canadians, "very important to over 60 per cent; only public officials have ever thought otherwise.

Among the tiny cohort of gay couples, the 2001 census revealed that 15 per cent of lesbian households and three per cent of gay couples have children, which as a ball-park estimate may translate into as many as 15,000 kids, under 0.2 per cent of all kids. But they came either from natural conception -- and where is their other-sex parent? -- or same-sex adoption, itself a result of judicial activism.

Equally disingenuous has been the reasoning of Canadian jurists that including same-sex couples will not prevent heterosexual couples from entering into marriage as they understand it. The issue is the public meaning of the institution into which they might enter.

The fight over marriage isn't merely symbolic -- it is symbolic in the highest degree, the meaning of a crucial institution of Canadianpublic life.

"The definition of 'spouse' as someone of the opposite sex reinforces the stereotype that homosexuals cannot and do not form lasting, caring, mutually supportive relationships," said Justice Cory in the Egan decision.

Or, it reinforces the natural reality that the healthiest, most secure, most enduring environment for children is the marriage of both biological parents. Statistically, the safest people for a child are its biological parents. And the single most dangerous person is the biologically unrelated cohabiting partner of its single parent. There is nothing in the statistics to suggest this cohabiting partner becomes less dangerous, by being the same sex as the biological parent.

"Lasting, caring, mutually supportive relationships" is a lowest common denominator, for which no one should need public encouragement. Parenthood, however, is a self- denial, and it does require public support.

Treating marriage as a "right" implicitly denies its original status as a "norm" or recognized duty with a crucial public purpose. Certainly norms are often violated, honoured in the breach rather than observance. But treating exceptions to the rule (the childless, the cohabiting or the same-sex) as reasons for eliminating the rule destroys it. It is yet another, debilitating failure to encourage the next generation in the sacrifices of parenthood. It confuses what society can tolerate with what, for its very survival, it needs to celebrate.

Evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics might be in a better position to make this case now, however, if they had been equally resistant to the innovations of no-fault divorce, normalized cohabitation, subsidized daycare and punitive tax regimes.