CHEMAINUS, BC—Prime Minister Stephen Harper may want to have his promised free vote on whether to revisit the definition of marriage “sooner rather than later,” but a growing chorus of traditional marriage advocates would prefer that he postpone it for as long as possible.
Former Vancouver Island Conservative MP Reed Elley says they need time to plan and execute a common strategy if they are to have any realistic hope of reversing the law Parliament passed last year legalizing same-sex marriage.
“I think there’s a danger here,” he says, “that if social conservatives…don’t get their act together and have a united front on this one way or another, that we might win the battle in having a free vote but end up losing the war.”
Shortly after winning the January 23 election, Harper told reporters his preference would be to have the motion voted on “sooner rather than later, but not immediately.” He has since indicated that this could take place in the fall.
Homosexuals fear that this would be just the opening salvo from a government they think is determined to take away their newly-won rights.
“We need to be very vigilant and call them to task on any kind of clawbacks they propose to our equality,” Gilles Marchildon, executive director of the lobby group Égale Canada, told Xtra.
No illusions
But social conservatives are under no illusions this motion would pass if it were to be voted on any time soon.
“It would be a very, very close vote,” says Janet Epp Buckingham, director of law and public policy with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
A Globe and Mail poll of incoming MPs found that 137 would support reopening the marriage debate and 152 would likely be opposed. An additional 19 were undecided.
Buckingham believes it is these undecided MPs who will seal the fate of the motion.
“Also,” she says, “the people who had been in [the previous Liberal] Cabinet who historically had supported the traditional definition of marriage—people like [Joe] Volpe and [Joe] Fontana—we don’t know how they would vote this time.”
But while agreeing that the motion should not be voted on hastily, pro-marriage advocates differ on how to help ensure it ultimately passes.
Douglas Farrow, a professor of religious studies at McGill University, says Harper should first name an independent commission to address the implications of redefining marriage—something he believes no political party up to now has adequately addressed.
“The present government should acknowledge that…these have to be considered and discussed before the Parliament decides how to handle the situation,” Farrow says. “That requires some expertise, and it will require at least a few months.”
Even a favourable vote, he adds, would not by itself “answer the question of on what grounds are you going to write a replacement bill and defend that in the courts?”
Elley, however, would prefer to see the vote postponed until after the next election. “We can still elect a majority of pro-marriage candidates…if we continue to organize the way we are,” he says. “We’re getting much better organized and we can only sharpen that if we have more time.”
But Joseph Ben-Ami, executive director of the Institute for Canadian Values, worries that a long delay could be self-defeating—because at some point people will come to accept gay marriage as the status quo. “We can’t simply hold off…for three or four years and then expect that we’re going to be able to deal with it,” he says.
Study planned
The Ottawa-based think-tank plans to produce in the next few months its own comprehensive study on the risks of redefining marriage. It may also host a symposium.
“We’re confident,” says Ben-Ami, “that if [MPs] are fully informed and educated on all of the issues, that they’re going to vote the correct way.”
