Gay marriage was a slippery slope after all

Same-sex marriage is a slippery slope. A Sens fan marrying a Leafs fan? Abomination..

Was "Vote Marriage, Canada!" only astroturf, then?

The last election saw a final, last-ditch effort from social conservatives to overturn the introduction of same-sex marriage in Canada, part of which involved an organization effort on the part of socially conservative activists.

One part of this effort was Vote Marriage, Canada!, headed by retiring MPs Pat O'Brien (a Liberal) and Grant Hill (a Conservative).

Not all went smoothly. There was a delay in settling on a final name for their effort and getting their website up (see here). (The website itself can be seen at archive.org.) Once they were operational, however, they made a good bit of noise, endorsing over 100 candidates in the election.

Vote Marriage made some grand claims during that election, including the announcement that 20,000 had signed into his site as volunteers. Some observed that Vote Marriage only supported Conservatives. Others mused darkly that there may have been financial support coming from American religious figures.

It was, apparently, smoke and mirrors: part astroturf and part Potemkin village.

As a third-party participant, Vote Marriage was compelled to file an account of their advertising expenses at Elections Canada. You can go there now (here) to see what Vote Marriage actually accomplished. There you will see what I've copied in the screen-capture to the right: no contributors, no contributions, and no advertising. Nada. Zilch. Gar nichts. Niente. Rien.

This is, however, too often the case with social conservative causes in Canada, whose supporters seem too ready to repeat what is untrue, half-true, exaggerated, or misleadingly selective. There are the diploma-mill doctorates of McVety and Rushfeldt, the fake polling of KLRVU, exaggerations about opposition to the Morgentaler award, inflated attendance at their demonstrations (400 or 1000?), endless and open freeping, etc. A seemingly endless stream of righteous lies and pious exaggeration.

Why is this noteworthy? One should expect activists to be active and to do what is necessary to advance their cause. But surely one expects those whose self-styled motivations are religious to show a passing interest in truth. Or maybe not. They claim to believe that knowing the truth will set them free. Telling it, apparently, brings them no advantage.

I don't, I don't, I don't: why same-sex marriage does not necessarily lead to legalized polygamy

Michael Coren has many virtues that I find admirable: he is intelligent, articulate, and--given his religious convictions--surprisingly independent in his thinking. Despite this he sometimes takes bizarre positions. Take, for example, his call to nuke Iran in 2006. One shakes one's head.

A few days ago, he again went a bit astray in a column that revisited same-sex marriage and argued that the decision will inevitably lead to the legalization of polygamy. Coren provided a convenient summary for his case:

And thus the inevitable. I predict that polygamy will be legal and accepted in this country within five years. Any Charter challenge in support of the custom would not only be backed by the revolutionary precedent of same-sex marriage redefinition but also by guaranteed freedom of religion clauses.

Coren's position has a superficial logic to it: if the rules can change for one group, they can for another, and at first glance the polygamists have two avenues by which they might make their argument: freedom to marry and freedom of religion.

But constitutional law is not a vending machine into which a coin is inserted, thereby guaranteeing a tasty snack. Nor do judges overthrow existing law on a whim. Any future change will require a test-case and a legal argument.

Such was the case with the constitutional challenge that led to marriage equality. The principle at question was the equal protection of the law: that if the state issues marriage licenses, it is unconstitutional to disallow someone a marriage license because she is a lesbian, just as it would be to disallow it for a Chinese, an octogenarian, or a Catholic. Not everyone likes the argument or is persuaded by it -- but the court was convinced, parliament ultimately agreed, and the matter was legally settled, if not politically.

How would this principle apply to polygamy? Essentially, the state limits the number of marriage licenses to one per customer. Do you want to marry someone else? First, your first marriage must be dissolved. At the moment the law is applied to all equally--Catholics, Muslims, Mormons, and atheists are all allowed only to have one spouse at a time. So, too, gays and lesbians. A polygamist can no more acquire a second wife under this principle than he could could have more than one SIN number. There is no avenue for a constitutional challenge here -- at least that I can see.

Coren supposes that the charter principle of freedom of religion might also be invoked. This is less than obvious, however. Freedom of religion prevents the state requiring someone to perform an action that their religion forbids, or forbidding someone from doing something that their religion requires.

As far as I know, however, polygamy is not, a requirement of any religion. Mormonism abandoned it long ago, and although conservative Islam allows men to take up to four wives, it does not require it and never has. (In fact, it is relatively rare even in those countries where it is legal, and Islam doesn't even encourage it: see here and here).

Now, even a superficial consideration of our legal system and various religions' moral systems shows that they operate in different registers. There are many behaviours that religions forbid but the state allows (consumption of alcohol, blood transfusions, divorce); there are behaviours that the state forbids or regulates that religions are silent about (speed limits, the structure of legal trusts, the filing deadline of one's taxes).

In light of this, a successful constitutional challenge to legalize polygamy seems unlikely to me -- there is no obvious legal avenue for a challenge. So, unlike Coren, I doubt whether multiple "I do"s are in any of our futures.

Maybe ssm is not so safe after all.

I did some quick calculations about same-sex marriage shortly after the vote and guestimated that the conservative motion to overturn it would fail by 20 votes (see here).

Clayton over at Marriage Vote does a much more meticulous calculation and comes up with same-sex marriage surviving by just two votes.

Update As commenter Nitangae points out, Clayton's numbers seem to be firming up towards the confirmation of ssm.

Harper will be to ssm what Mulroney was to the death penalty

Over at the Ambler, Kevin Grace, while critiquing some thoughts of mine on whether there was a socon-effect in some ridings, made an interesting statement:

I have it on unimpeachable authority that Harper never cared much about SSM and was shocked when it became a popular outrage.

Others have assumed as much (here); I don't doubt it.

One point that could be added is the effect that this will have on the issue for the future.

I'm not sure how many of my blogging friends are old enough to remember the politics of the late-70s and early 80s. One issue that especially animated conservatives back then was the death penalty. It hadn't been used in Canada since 1962 and was voted off the books in 1976. Conservatives used it as a wedge issue to good effect, and when Mulroney was elected with a majority in 1984, many hoped that it would to re-introduced. It was not to be the case. In a free-vote in 1987, capital punishment was rejected, never to re-appear as a serious issue.

I argued a couple days ago that there are not enough votes in the house to overturn same-sex marriage (see here).

It seems to me that net effect of Harper's coming free-vote will be, barring some unexpected gamesmanship (cf. here), that the issue is laid to rest forever.

more noise on the fate of the ssm liberals

Over at the Ambler, Kevin Grace takes apart my post (here) on the dozen or so socially-conservative candidates that could be identified last summer. I had suggested that these candidates generally did a couple points worse than we'd expect from the general movement in the election and might be attributable to discomfort with social conservativism. Grace points out that this can just as easily (and more credibly) be attributed to statistical noise.

I think his point is confirmed if we look at the ssm liberals. I list them here with their results in 2004 and 2006, the net change, and the net change in their province.

		2004	2006	change	prov. change
Andy Savoy (Tobique—Mactaquac)	NB	48.2%	42.9%	-5.3%	-5.4%
Paul Zed (Saint John)	NB	43.3%	42.9%	-0.4%	-5.4%
Charles Hubbard (Miramichi)	NB	48.1%	42.3%	-5.8%	-5.4%
Bill Matthews (Random—Burin—St. George's)	NL	46.8%	45.5%	-1.3%	-5.2%
Scott Simms (Bonavista—etc.)	NL	48.2%	52.0%	3.8%	-5.2%
Rodger Cuzner (Cape Breton—Canso)	NS	53.3%	53.2%	-0.1%	-2.6%
Walt Lastewka (St. Catharines)	ON	40.4%	37.0%	-3.4%	-4.8%
Judi Longfield (Whitby—Oshawa)	ON	45.0%	38.8%	-6.2%	-4.8%
Roger Gallaway (Sarnia—Lambton)	ON	41.9%	33.1%	-8.8%	-4.8%
Gary Carr (Halton)	ON	48.4%	41.4%	-7.0%	-4.8%
Ken Boshcoff (Thunder Bay—Rainy River)	ON	39.4%	35.1%	-4.3%	-4.8%
Gerry Byrne (Humber—etc.)	ON	62.6%	52.9%	-9.7%	-4.8%
John Cannis (Scarborough Centre)	ON	56.7%	55.4%	-1.3%	-4.8%
Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay—Superior North)	ON	43.0%	36.0%	-7.0%	-4.8%
Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North)	ON	63.3%	61.6%	-1.7%	-4.8%
Jim Karygiannis (Scarborough—Agincourt)	ON	64.1%	62.6%	-1.5%	-4.8%
Derek Lee (Scarborough—Rouge River)	ON	57.9%	65.6%	7.7%	-4.8%
Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan)	ON	53.4%	56.2%	2.8%	-4.8%
Gurbax Malhi (Bramalea)	ON	49.5%	50.7%	1.2%	-4.8%
John Maloney (Welland)	ON	39.6%	35.5%	-4.1%	-4.8%
John McKay (Scarborough—Guildwood)	ON	57.5%	53.3%	-4.2%	-4.8%
Dan McTeague (Pickering—Scarborough East)	ON	57.0%	52.7%	-4.3%	-4.8%
Paul Steckle (Huron—Bruce)	ON	49.8%	39.8%	-10.0%	-4.8%
Paul Szabo (Mississauga South)	ON	51.7%	43.9%	-7.8%	-4.8%
Alan Tonks (York South—Weston)	ON	59.8%	57.1%	-2.7%	-4.8%
Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest)	ON	49.5%	47.8%	-1.7%	-4.8%
Bryon Wilfert (Richmond Hill)	ON	58.5%	53.4%	-5.1%	-4.8%
Brenda Chamberlain (Guelph)	ON	44.6%	38.4%	-6.2%	-4.8%
Wajid Khan (Mississauga—Streetsville)	ON	50.6%	45.9%	-4.7%	-4.8%
Massimo Pacetti (Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel)	QC	63.9%	57.2%	-6.7%	-13.2%
Bernard Patry (Pierrefonds—Dollard)	QC	63.6%	51.1%	-12.5%	-13.2%
Francis Scarpaleggia (Lac-Saint-Louis)	QC	63.9%	48.2%	-15.7%	-13.2%
Raymond Simard (St. Boniface)	QC	46.6%	38.6%	-8.0%	-13.2%

Conclusion? Most of these Liberals' fortunes more or less fell in rough proportion to their provinces. This should mean that same-sex marriage probably played no great role in the election. Or rather, what roles it did play ended up cancelling as those who were motivated to vote pro- on this basis were equalled by those voting con-.

(In a slight defence of my last post, it was intended to explore the effect of social con-ism in general rather than ssm in particular. But still, such changes, except perhaps for Cindy Silver and Rondo Thomas, are probably noise.)

comments on the socon factor and the election

(Update. See now also Jay Currie)

Over at the Ambler, Kevin Michael Grace (who is always a good read) reacts to my nose-counting of the other day and opines: "If Canadians were so hell bent on punishing those known (or suspected) to harbour retrograde notions on the dignity of gay nuptials, they would have rejected Conservative MPs en masse."

There may be some truth there. But we have to keep things in perspective. Same-sex marriage was only one of a number of questions competing for the voters' attention. And even if a candidate were out of step with their constituents, ssm could hardly turn a safe-seat into a marginal one.

What we need to be interested in are those marginal ones, and the fate of socially conservative candidates within them.

Last spring, the Globe and Mail published a couple articles pointing out that several Conservative nominations had been won by candidates who seemed to reflect a religious right agenda. I tried to identify candidates that fit (see here) and, coming up with only a dozen or so names, concluded that they were not numerous enough to be a threat (here and here).

What happened to those candidates? Here is last summer's list, with some figures:

1. Andrew House in Halifax. Lost. Came in third with 18%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 15%.
2. Rakesh Khosla in Halifax West. Lost. Came in third with 23%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 21%
3. Paul Francis in Sackville-Eastern Shore. Lost. Came in third with 22%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 21.5%.
4. Darrel Reid in Richmond. Lost. Came in second with 39%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 35.3%.
5. Cindy Silver in North Vancouver. Lost. Came in second with 36.7%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 36.4%.
6. Marc Dalton in Burnaby-New Westminster. Lost. Came in third with 27.6%, slipping from the 2004 candidate's 28.3%.
7. Kevin Serviss in Sudbury. Lost. Came in second with 21%, the same as the 2004 candidate's 21%.
8. Ron Cannan in Kelowna. Won with 49%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 48%.
9. Rondo Thomas in Ajax. Lost. Came in second with 32.8%, slipping from the 2004 candidate's 33.6%.
10. David Sweet in Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough. Won with 39.1%, improving on his 34% of 2004.
11. Harold Albrecht in Kitchner-Conestoga. Won with 41.2%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 35.4%.

So, what's the pattern? Most Conservative candidates' totals improved, perhaps not as much as we'd otherwise expect--the Conservatives nation-wide were up 6%, and only Albrecht had that much of an increase. (Rondo Thomas, who was perhaps the most openly evangelical about his evangelicalism, actually went down.)

But even so, these figures suggest that being regarded as a religious activist would only cost a candidate a couple percent. In some races, of course, that can be enough.

Church clamp down a two-edged sword

The Catholic church, as has been fairly widely reported (see, e.g., here), has begun to punish MPs who had voted for same-sex marriage and against Catholic doctrine.

Many bloggers have commented on this. Those who supported ssm were appalled; those who were opposed, enthused. My view is that the RCs (and other churches) are free to use the whip on their members if they like. But I think they would be wiser not to. There is a potential back-lash here that I think they should be wary of. It was not long ago that JFK had an uphill argument to make in trying to convince protestant America that although a Catholic he did not take marching orders from the pope. Now, the church seems to be saying that all Catholic politicians should do precisely this. But does this mean that we have to begin scrutinizing Catholic politicians more closely than others in order to find out whether they are going to impose church doctrine concerning abortion, divorce, birth control, etc., on the rest of the country? If that process begins, I can only assume that it will work to the detriment of the Church.

Comuzzi should be praised, not criticized, for resigning

Many have no doubt already noticed the story that Joe Comuzzi has resigned his cabinet post rather than voting for same-sex marriage (see here).

I have not much engaged with the question of the ssm on this site, but I doubt if many will be surprised that I disagree with Comuzzi over ssm. Nevertheless, I think Comuzzi has done the right thing. As many have pointed out before, more free votes for parliamentarians would be a good thing. But in our system of government, cabinet solidarity is important: any government bill is by its nature a bill that cabinet has accepted collective responsibility to promote. If a cabinet minister disagrees with a bill to the extent that he cannot support it, he should resign.

Thus, I would argue, Comuzzi should be praised for what he has done, not criticized. (Of course, I might feel differently about this if ssm were to lose by a vote because of this.)

Hypocrisy, thy name is politics!

I'm not quite sure what to make of this story:

OTTAWA (CP) - Conservative Leader Stephen Harper says most Canadians won't think the same-sex marriage law is legitimate because it will only pass with support from the separatist Bloc Quebecois. The bill legalizing same-sex marriage is set to pass in the Commons this week.

The other three parties in the Commons jumped on Harper's remarks. Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe says his party has as much legitimacy as the Tories in Parliament, and that it's called democracy. NDP Leader Jack Layton says the Conservative leader's latest outburst is further proof of why his party's popularity is in decline. Justice Minister Irwin Cotler says the Bloc is a legitimate party in Parliament.

What is going on in this guy's head? Sure, many of us wish that the BQ didn't exist. But as long as it does, and as long as Bloquistes have seats in Parliament, they will have a role in making our laws. That doesn't impact the validity of those laws.

(And for those who follow such things: Harper didn't seem to think that BQ votes were any less valid when it came to voting for his non-confidence motions. But this is surely the politicians disease--condemn today what you embraced yesterday. Hypocrisy, they name is politics.)