DEMAND FOR CANADIAN SSM: Samuel Bell replies to David Frum

...I checked Frum's assertions against the vital statistics available from the Statistics Canada Web site. According to their data, in 2003 there were 145,048 marriages in Canada (and 146,377 in 2004). Based on those figures, for a rough estimate, let's say there are approximately 150,000 marriages in a given year in Canada. According to the figures Frum provides, there were at least 4,300 gay marriages in Canada during the first year that they were allowed, so gay marriages made up about 2.8% of the total number of marriages within that year.

Using Frum's estimate that about 3% of Canadian adults are gay, the percentage of marriages involving gay couples closely matched the percentage of gays in the population as a whole. Based on that figure alone, it is difficult to support the claim that gays have a low desire to marry, since their actual marriage rate so far is about the same as heterosexuals'. ...

Granted, there was probably an influx of gays from other provinces who came to Ontario to take advantage of the right available there, but it certainly would not have been all of the gay couples who desire to marry. Probably many would have the expectation that gay marriages would become available in their home province, among other reasons. Also, the fact that many gay couples would make the trek to another province to get married shows the strength of their attraction to the institution.

Frum's statement that "some 98 percent of adult Canadian gays have chosen not to avail themselves of their new legal right" also needs to be looked at in relation to these statistics. If 8,600 out of 750,000 gays got married in 2003-2004 (since there are two people in each of the 4,300 gay marriages), that means only about 1.1% of all Canadian gays got married during that year. In that same period, about 300,000 out of 23,250,000 marriageable heterosexual Canadians got married, which amounts to approximately 1.3% of the heterosexual population. Thus, the heterosexual marriage rate was similar to the gay marriage rate, and it makes no sense to say "very few homosexuals wish for marriage for themselves" unless you also say that about heterosexuals.

more
posted by Eve at 4:21 PM | Link |

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home