How did we get here?

Canadians are proud of their moderate tendencies. We are peacemakers, looking for conciliation rather than confrontation. Traditionally, the Liberals have been seen to hold the centre of the political spectrum -- able to straddle the fence on tricky issues and come to some consensus. Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, that is the common perception -- they represent moderate thinking Canadians, or did, until now.

With most political issues, disparate voices can be brought together through compromise and negotiation. Each side concedes some ground and a workable solution can be found. Gay 'coupling' and the legal form it should take, used to be one of those issues.

Same-sex marriage is not a dead issue judging from the blogs. Morality issues are always hot button topics, but as Debris Trail has said a few times, it could be a wedge issue come an election.
The most noticeable thing to me about the whole debate, is how fixed the debaters have become. There is a rigidity to the positions that wasn't there a couple of years ago. There is antipathy of all things Roman Catholic/Christian amongst many advocates of gay marriage, and more strongly worded anti-gay rhetoric used by many opposed.

It used to be there was a common middle ground on gay rights. This mutual understanding between the two conflicting views prevented extremists from taking root -- reasonable people agreed that gays had the right to live, and work, and be -- just as any other citizen -- free from persecution or harassment for their 'differences'. The thinking expanded, and gays began to fight for and assume rights that once belonged exclusively to heterosexuals -- pension rights for their partners for example. Many companies freely offered this kind of benefit, without the need for legislation to force the issue.

This modernization of thinking about gay rights allowed people with religious objections to 'gay sex' to feel both fair and principled. They could understand a person being entitled to receive their dead partner's pension benefits, without having to agree with (or even consider) the morality or validity of the 'gay lifestyle'. All of the main political parties agreed that government recognition of the 'unions' of same-sex couples was inevitable. Even the majority of those who are personally opposed to homosexual activity on a religious or moral level, were willing to make this concession.

At some point, it stopped being reasonable and moderate to respect the right of gay people to live their lives and go about their business -- it stopped being enough to believe that they were entitled to an institution, parallel to marriage, but different. Not different because they are unequal with heterosexuals, but different because they do not fit the one universal criteria for marriage understood for thousands of years. You had to do more -- you had to think their committed, conjugal relationships hold the same social value, and deserve the same societal support as heterosexual marriages. You had to believe that marriage should yield it's definition to accommodate their special circumstances.

The Liberals have annihilated the centre. They have taken the position they themselves recently vacated and have labelled it 'extreme'. It didn't happen because the Liberals thought it was the right thing to do - enlightenment doesn't affect a vast number of people simultaneously. Progress amongst moderates is deliberately slow -- only extremists want change with speed -- and that's only so they can't take in the damage they're doing.

For those who argue that it was a long arduous struggle -- think again. Marriage might have been on the gay agenda for 35 - 40 years, but for the average person, it only popped onto the radar seriously in the past 4 -5 years. Most struggles for 'equality' and 'recognition' take centuries -- women have been around since the dawn of time, and we were only granted the right to vote in the last eighty years. Anyway, I started to wonder how this happened so quickly, and why.

The Liberals and Conservatives both have their share of social conservatives. Both parties had moderate fiscal policies -- one favouring corporate welfare, the other tax cuts -- but not too dissimilar for the general public to really understand or care. Both parties were in favour of maintaining public healthcare and promised they'd improve the system. Both said they would address the democratic deficit and restore accountability to government. The Conservatives were untested, the Liberals tainted. There were no significant policy issues on which the parties differed enough to become an election winner, so it became a matter of trust -- The Liberals may have squandered the public trust, but the Conservatives were a new entity and public trust is not a given.

When the Conservatives latched on to Adscam to show the Liberals as corrupt, the Liberals realised they could say they'd clean up government but people were bound to be skeptical since they had made the mess in the first place. So, they had to distinguish themselves from the Conservatives on policy issues. Their record of 'fiscal responsibility' (as dubious as it might be) was not worth tossing aside, so they seized upon a strategy that would portray themselves as the champions of minority rights (we're a nation of minorities) and simultaneously set up the Conservatives as religious fanatics or ignorant bigots.

Because we had reached a point as a nation where most people expected and accepted that gay unions would receive recognition by the government, and because the Conservative Party had already said that it was for keeping the traditional definition of marriage (while accepting the compromise solution of civil unions) -- the Liberals knew that in order to make a clear distinction between themselves from the Conservatives, they would have to be bold. It was all or nothing. They chose to redefine marriage, and realigned political boundaries in the process.

The Liberals framed gay marriage as a human rights issue, making any opposition to it automatically 'anti-Charter'. They appeased the critics by offering protections for religions unwilling to yield the traditional definition. The protection was fallacious because it is not within their jurisdiction, and it is paradoxical because if marriage is a 'human right' how does the government justify using religious freedoms to deny a human right on the basis of sexual orientation?

Marriage is not a human right, but the government needed people to buy into this vision. Human rights are regarded as belonging fundamentally to all persons. They are seen as being universal, applying to all people everywhere, and as intrinsic, referring to essential or basic human needs. By framing the marriage issue as a 'human rights' issue, it becomes increasingly impossible to oppose same-sex marriage without being painted as a bigot or a homophobe.

There can be no middle-ground on human rights issues. They aren't the same as other rights, which are granted based on criteria set out by the government -- human rights are granted to all of us by virtue of being human.

Reading C-38, I'm not sure if the law is set out that way (as a human right) but throughout the debates this is the message being driven home by the 'centerist' Liberals. The soft middle latched on, and allowed the boundaries to shift -- setting an extreme and radical ideology in place of middle of the road sensibilities.

The middle is now unwalkable for people who until recently, were confident they held a fair and legitimate view of gay rights. The Liberals can call it what they like, but same-sex marriage is not a moderate position. By framing the question as they did, the Liberals have annihilated the centre for political gain.

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