Rulings bring marriage closer to reality for gay Canadians

VANCOUVER, B.C. — They drive a 1974 Volvo sedan, watch too much television, go to bed too early, do a lot of gardening, don't do as much housework as they should and perpetually put off plans to exercise regularly.

"We're like an old married couple," said Dawn Barbeau, 38, who exchanged vows and adopted a last name with her partner, Elizabeth, five years ago.

Their commitment ceremony was nice, the couple said. But it wasn't a real wedding.

The Barbeaus and other lesbian and gay couples in Canada soon may be able to experience true matrimony. Canada is edging ever closer to becoming the first country in the Americas and the third in the world — after the Netherlands and Belgium — to legalize marriage between a same-sex couple, treating the bond exactly as one between a man and a woman.

Three court decisions, including a May 1 unanimous ruling by British Columbia's highest court, have struck down as discriminatory the Canadian law defining marriage as exclusively for heterosexuals. The B.C. justices declared the only true equality for same-sex couples seeking a government-sanctioned commitment is marriage.

Although many same-sex Canadian couples who live together already receive most of the same benefits as married couples, gays and lesbians say their relationships won't receive the same respect until they can legally marry.

The government has not decided whether to appeal the B.C. ruling. While it appeals the other two cases, in Ontario and Quebec, a committee of the Canadian House of Commons for the past seven months has vetted the issue through hearings in the nation's capital of Ottawa and across the country.

Any day now, the committee is to release a report recommending how the government should proceed.

Whatever route the government takes, Canada's gays and lesbians are confident the one-time pipe dream of marriage will come true in only a matter of time.

"The question, at this point, is how much time and money our government is going to waste fighting what it knows is a losing battle," said Laurie Aaron, chairman of the equal marriage committee for Egale Canada, a gay-rights organization.

Faith groups in Canada, which argue that same-sex marriage degrades the institution and would render it meaningless, admit they are losing the battle.

"When you have what seems like every court in the land ruling against you, there's a lot to be discouraged about," said Derek Rogusky, vice president of family policy and community impact for Focus on the Family Canada, a Christian-based policy group that intervened in the B.C. and Ontario cases.

Little weight in U.S.

If same-sex marriage is permitted in Canada, gay and lesbian couples in the United States might rush across the border to get married. But legal experts say a Canadian marriage license likely would carry little weight as a legal document.

"It is unlikely those unions would give a couple everything associated with marriage in the U.S.," said Jamie Pedersen, a Seattle attorney who co-chairs the national board of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, a gay civil-rights group. "But you can't necessarily count on them being disregarded for every purpose."

In the United States, no state has legalized gay marriage, and 37 — including Washington — have laws prohibiting them from honoring a same-sex marriage from another jurisdiction. Vermont allows same-sex civil unions, a legal registration short of marriage that, nevertheless, affords couples the same benefits and rights as married couples.

Challenges to laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are under way in Massachusetts and New Jersey.

Pedersen said one state allowing gay marriage would provide a stronger legal basis to challenge prohibitions in other states than a Canadian law.

A gulf apart

Although separated only by a boundary, Canada and the United States are a gulf apart in how same-sex relationships are valued in society.

"Here, we are talking about whether same-sex couples should marry, and before your Supreme Court is the issue of whether same-sex couples should be able to have sex in the privacy of their own bedrooms," said Aaron, referring to the pending review of same-sex sodomy prohibitions in 13 states.

A gay-marriage bill failed to get a hearing during the recently concluded Washington state legislative session. A bill that would provide civil-rights protections for gays and lesbians has been introduced in the state's Legislature every year since Gerald Ford was president — but has never passed.

The legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada could be felt in the United States in cultural ways, said Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, who carried both bills.

"Washingtonians may start to look at B.C., a province so similar to us, and say, 'I guess this idea isn't that scary,' " he said. "On the other hand, the Canadian situation doesn't provide us much of a model to move forward on because our legal systems are so different."

In Canada, opinion polls show citizens split or slightly in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. For many Canadians, it is a logical next step in a country that already treats common-law couples — including those in same-sex relationships — nearly the same as married couples. In Canada, for example, common-law couples can file their income taxes jointly.

In B.C., a couple in a conjugal relationship in which they have been cohabiting for at least one year are regarded as a common-law couple. Other provinces require as many as three years of living together. Three Canadian provinces — Quebec, Nova Scotia and Manitoba — go a step further, permitting civil unions for same-sex couples.

"Legally and operationally, same-sex marriage is not that big of a change in Canada," Aaron said. "But symbolically, it's huge."

'Real deal'

The Barbeaus, who met while visiting Seattle during Bumbershoot in 1996, are one of eight couples who sued in B.C. in order to marry. Although the Barbeaus say they already feel like they are married, they would make it legal if they could.

"I don't know what the ceremony would look like, exactly," said Elizabeth Barbeau, 39. "I doubt we would have another big ceremony, though. That would just seem like another suck for gifts."

Shane McCloskey, 30, and Dave Shortt, 28, another litigant couple in the case, met in college seven years ago and have lived together, pretty much, ever since. But they have not had a commitment ceremony.

"It would be great to have a ceremony celebrating our love for one another," McCloskey said. "But that's what a wedding is. We have decided to wait for the real deal."

On the balcony of their eighth-floor high-rise apartment in the city's West End, they share a sweeping view of Stanley Park and Burrard Inlet. Inside, seven framed black-and-white photographs cover a wall — gifts that McCloskey gives Shortt each Valentine's Day they have been together.

"We see our relationship as legitimate as any married couple," McCloskey said. "But that's not true in the eyes of everyone else. There is always this sense that gay people are perpetually dating, no matter how long you are together. Being allowed to get married will help change that."

Shortt and McCloskey said they worried about their safety after signing onto the lawsuit, which put them in the public eye. But they said they haven't received a single negative phone call or e-mail, only expressions of support.

"Most people, I think, just don't really care," Shortt said. "It's not this huge moral issue up here like it is down there."

Church support

Canada's largest Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada, has come out in support of same-sex marriage. Contrast that with the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, which condemns homosexuality as sin. Although faith groups make up much of the opposition to same-sex marriage in Canada, their influence in public policy is nowhere near what it is in the United States.

"Evangelical Christianity has never been a large part of Canada's religious community, and, as a result, politicians haven't had to go after that group as a voting bloc," said Rogusky, of Focus on the Family.

Some parts of Canada, particularly Quebec, are downright hostile to a church sticking its nose in public policy, said Pavel Reid, director of the Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver's Office of Life and Family. The Archdiocese has had to tread lightly on the same-sex-marriage issue, emphasizing that the institution of marriage as one man and one woman predates Christianity.

It has gone so far as to suggest to Parliament that civil unions — including between same-sex couples — are a reasonable alternative to marriage, and a preferred option to redefining it. That is quite a stretch from the Vatican position that governments shouldn't promote alternative legal structures to marriage.

"We have had to respond to the legal reality of the situation in Canada," Reid said. "I wouldn't say same-sex marriage is an inevitability yet. But it's certainly more realistic than it is south of the border, and we're not kidding ourselves about that."

Aaron, of Egale, said the Archdiocese's softened position on civil unions illustrates that the opponents "are on a sinking ship and trying to do anything they can to stop us from winning the right to marry."

While the legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada would not force any religion to perform the ceremony, another sign of a church softening its position on blessing the relationships occurred Wednesday night in Vancouver. For the first time ever, a sacred rite performed for a male couple inside an Anglican church was authorized by the diocese of New Westminster, according to the Associated Press.

Reid said many Canadians supporting the right to marry are not considering the effects, such as whether those in other nontraditional relationships — polygamists, for example — must be given the right to marry if they claim discrimination.

"In Canada, we tend to immediately discuss issues in terms of civil rights instead of public-policy implications," Reid said. "A large number of Canadians aren't sure why we shouldn't do it so they say, sure, let them do it. That's a very Canadian way of doing things."

In Vancouver, the Barbeaus and Shortt and McCloskey await the day that defining their relationship to others won't be awkward.

Elizabeth Barbeau said her young niece recently asked her mother if Elizabeth and Dawn were married. She told the child that they were.

"It is sad that my sister has to lie to my niece in order to tell her the truth," Elizabeth Barbeau said.

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com