What Marriage?

… in Canadian Law, there are only Civil Unions, and those not very civil to men.
(draft) 2019, Davd

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is being shamed by Liberals and to some extent by NDP Leader Singh, for saying, over a dozen years ago, that same-sex couples should be allowed “civil unions” but not Christian marriage. So strange are the ways of political campaigning, that the facts of the matter have been largely, perhaps entirely ignored. There is no recognition of, no support for Christian marriage and its ilk, in Canadian law. What Scheer said same-sex couples should be allowed in 2005, is the best Canadian law allows to any couples today.

Christian marriage ceremonies typically include promises to stay together
“For better or for worse,
whether richer or poorer,
in sickness and in health
so long as we both shall live.”

Canadian law uses the 8-letter M-word, but does not support, much less enforce, those promises. Under Canadian law as practiced, one of the couple can get a divorce without the consent of the other, and without being shown to have wronged the other.

The rather famous “Misandry Bubble” blog asserts that marriage along the lines of the Christian model that happens to be familiar to me, is what, “[w]hen applied over an entire population of humans, … was known as ‘civilization’.” Civilization depended on marriage, lifelong faithful marriage, to motivate the work force… and such marriage was a foundation aspect of civilizations with several different, dominant religions.¹

The CBC’s Aaron Wherry recently wrote, “The Conservatives, [in 2005], were proposing that same-sex couples could instead be covered by ‘civil unions’.” Neither Wherry nor Scheer seems to have noticed that the “Civil Marriage Act” now provides “civil unions”, and weak ones, nothing better; not only for same-sex couples, but all couples. The Christian model is not a supported option; while at least one familiar, widely cited source affirms socially healthy marriage to be more like the Christian model than like today’s Canadian law.

Feminism is also mentioned in Glubb’s The Fate of Empires… as associated with their decadence [p. 15]². It seems that a relatively respected Indo-American “Futurist” blogger and the British military officer and historian who founded the first modern Arab army (and wrote three-plus decades earlier), concur that Feminism is not good for civilizations.

The degradation of marriage, according to “the Futurist” especially, is destructive of civilization. He writes more of the United States than of Canada, but Nathanson and Young [2006] indicate that the baleful effects of divorce laws and precedents are similar in the two countries. Civil unions, easily dissolved to the disadvantage of men and especially disadvantage of fathers [Brown, 2013, Nathanson and Young, 2006], are societally destructive.

The 8-letter M-word is used for its name, but what Canadian ‘marriage’ constitutes is not a lifelong covenant; it is a civil contract and weaker than most.

That’s all any Canadian can have in 2019, and all that Canadian law has respected (I hesitate to say “enforced” because of the unhappy state of divorce law as practiced in recent years; cf. Brown, 2013, Nathanson and Young, 2001, 2006)

What Liberal Governments have provided for same-sex couples, is the sort of “civil union” Scheer said they should be allowed in 2005 — or less — and they are shaming him for saying it? Considering the beneficial effects of traditional marriage, the shame should be theirs…and apparently, the NDP’s as well.

References:

Brown, Grant A. (2004). “Gender as a Factor in the Response of the Law-Enforcement System to Violence Against Partners,” Sexuality and Culture, Vol. 8, Issues 3 & 4, pp. 3-139.

Brown, Grant A. (2006). “The Curious Case of Country C,” in In the Agora: The Public Face of Canadian Philosophy, Andrew Irvine, ed., University of Toronto Press, pp. 261-263

Brown, Grant A., 2013. Ideology And Dysfunction In Family Law: How Courts Disenfranchise Fathers. Calgary and Winnipeg: Canadian Constitution Foundation and Frontier Centre For Public Policy

“Futurist”, 2010. The Misandry Bubble. January 1.

Glubb, John Bagot, 1978. The Fate of Empires. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd.

Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young, 2001. Spreading Misandry:“The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press

Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young, 2006. Legalizing Misandry“: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Notes:

1. I do not myself know Buddhist, Hebrew, Hindu, Islamic, Sikh, etc. teachings on marriage as well as the Indo-American author of “The Misandry Bubble“, a classic blog from 2010. He states:

“… all major religions constructed an institution to force constructive conduct out of both genders while penalizing the natural primate tendencies of each. This institution was known as ‘marriage’. Societies that enforced monogamous marriage made sure all beta men had wives, thus unlocking productive output out of these men who in pre-modern times would have had no incentive to be productive. Women, in turn, received a provider, a protector, and higher social status than unmarried women, who often were trapped in poverty. When applied over an entire population of humans, this system was known as ‘civilization’.“

“The Misandry Bubble” goes on to list no-fault divorce, abortion, modern contraception, and “female-centric social engineering” as having taken the civilizing merits from what still is called marriage, but no longer is.

2. “An increase in the influence of women in public life has often been associated with national decline. The later Romans complained that, although Rome ruled the world, women ruled Rome. In the tenth century, a similar tendency was observable in the Arab Empire, the women demanding admission to the professions hitherto monopolised by men. . . .

“Soon after this period, government and public order collapsed, and foreign invaders overran the country. The resulting increase in confusion and violence made it unsafe for women to move unescorted in the streets, with the result that this feminist movement collapsed.”