The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Supreme Court gives go-ahead for gay marraige

Here's the actual court decision:

http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/html/2004scc079.wpd.html

You'll want to focus on "Question 3," which deals with the freedom of religious institutions in this matter. If you have the time to flip through the whole decision, basically their attitute is non-comittal in this regards, saying that conflicts of religion with this proposed act will be dealt with on a "case by case" basis. We've had a few of those cases already, and know how they turn out.

This breaks my heart.

Henry,

From what I understand on this matter in regard to the Supreme Court ruling, it has "no teeth", i.e., it is not binding because it isn't "law". In other words, the few Provinces who don't have "Gay Marriage" laws (I think there are only 3 that don't out of the 10) it doesn't apply. To make Gay Marriages the "law", i.e., every Province, region, city and town MUST allow and recognize and them and the relevant government agents who perform marriages cannot refuse to marry Gays, it has to come from the Legislature. In other words, like the U.S., the judicial branch of the government cannot create laws, although too often they have done exactly that with their rulings, <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/rolleyes2.gif" alt="" /> but rather bills are created and must pass through the legislative branch, which if passed become law and to which the courts then must uphold.

Sadly, I doubt you will find many churches, pastors or even professing christians in Canada raising much of a protest over this never mind refusing to abide by ANY ruling that would force them to accept Gay marriages. They really need to change the national anthem to "Oh Gomorrah"

You might be right, but from what I gathered from the CBC article is that if the parliament passes the bill they've tabled (which has been awaiting this Supreme Court opinion), which will likely happen by the month's end, then it will automatically be law for all Canada, irrespective if individual provincial rulings. I could be wrong, though.

Henry,

I believe you are correct in what you are understanding of this situation. And, that is exactly what I tried to say also, although perhaps not as clearly as I could have. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/giggle.gif" alt="" /> What needs to happen before this ruling will be binding upon ALL Canadians is that the Legislature must vote the Bill into law. Until that happens, and I have no doubt that it will happen, Provinces are not under any obligation to accept Gay marriages as legitimate and thus anything to do with such "partners" claiming: benefits, community rights, etc., can be rejected. After the Bill becomes law, then Gays will have the exact same "rights" and privileges as heterosexual couples; married and/or common law. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/rolleyes2.gif" alt="" />

In His Grace,

My pastor said quite a while back that one day he expects to have his marriage license revoked, for not marrying gays. He also said, he doesn’t know any pastors that will marry gays (I assume he is talking about within our denomination).
Also, having been a former Penticostal, I know how passionate they are against matters such as this.

Pilgrim, I happen to know that there are many Christians in Canada that are protesting this matter.

Tom

Tom,

Your frequent insistence in arguing or refuting someone's remarks by referring to your own personal "experience" has gotten you into a number of embarrassing situations in the past. I would have hoped that you had learned something from those past events. But it looks like you haven't. What I would challenge you on is that the number of people you know who are opposed to Gay marriage pales in comparison to the number of Canadians who support it. Further, since the vast majority of churches in Canada are Liberal, even if you wanted to limit the range of people to poll to those who only attend a church of some kind, the results would still show an overwhelming majority would support, rather than oppose Gay marriages.

My comment was made in relation to the COUNTRY of Canada and it was not meant to be qualified by those whom you know personally. However, if you personally know the majority of Canadian citizens, and they have told you that they are opposed to Gay marriage, then I would surely stand corrected and recant my remark in this regard. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

In His Grace,

Pilgrim

I don't think I have anything to be embarrassed about.
Though, I do know that there are a lot of people who hold to some sort of Church affiliation, both liberal and conservative. Perhaps I’m naive, but I am not convinced that you are correct that the vast majority of Canadians support gay marriage.
That may be a mute point however, because it is probably closer to 50/50 and that is bad enough.
If you can provide proof that I am wrong about that, I would gladly eat humble pie.

Tom

Well Tom,

Since 7 or is it 8 out of the 10 Provinces in Canada have already passed laws that sanction Gay marriage, I would say that this sufficiently proves my point. Now, just for fun, I could use your type of "data" based upon an extremely small sampling and then apply that to the whole. In the hamlet where I live, at least 85% of the people living here are either supportive of Gay marriage or apathetic to it, i.e., they don't care if Gays are given the full marriage status. Therefore, based upon the "people I know", I could theorize and conclude that the majority of Canadians support such laws.

Again.... you do NOT have sufficient numbers of people you claim to know who are opposed to conclude that the majority of Canadians are opposed to such legislation. To even suggest you do is utterly preposterous.

The fact that 7 or 8 out of 10 provinces (I will take your word for it) have passed laws that sanction laws supporting gay marriage. Does not necessarily reflect the majority of the views held in these provinces.
All that it needs is liberal judges and politicians, to pass laws such as this.
Yes people elect these politicians and in a way they take responcibity for putting them in power. But unfortunately many Canadians are ignorant of what is going on in government.
Unfortunately even some of my friends who agree with me on almost all theological matters. Have been duped by the liberal media, into voting for the federal Liberal party.
This is not because they like things like abortion and gay marriage (far from it), but because they have believed liberal lies to say that the Conservative party can not be trusted.

In Canada, truth is hard to find because what we hear in the news today is not news, it is liberal slanted journalism.
When I said it was about 50/50, I did so because I saw some polls done on the matter a while back. At the time, I believe the polls were more in support of those who don't support gay marriage. But now I fear if the trends continue, we will become the minority (if we are not already).

I am reminded about back in the 60's when we were fighting the abortion issue. The pro-life side said to the pro-choice side, something to the effect of: If abortion becomes legal, then pretty soon things like euthanasia will be up for debate as well.
The pro-choice side responded back; don't be silly you are comparing apples to oranges...

Pilgrim, you and I are not really at odds in this matter. I am just trying to remain optimistic, something that is becoming harder and harder to do.
But then again, my hope is not built on this world, so maybe I shouldn't think that way.

As you know, Canada is not the only Country that is in this sinking boat of moral decay.
I am on the prayer chain at my Church and I just heard that a missionary family associated with our denomination had their three year old child taken away from them.
This happened in France, where the child's grandmother wanted the child brought up in an atheist household, so she sued for custody and won. Apparently Canada and our missionary association have tried to intervene on behalf of the parents (the parents are Canadian), but it doesn't look like they are going to be successful.

Pilgrim, it has been a pretty hard two months for my family and me, some of which I have put on the prayer forum. So although I am trying not to be touchy, I may be without doing it on purpose.

Tom