TECHNOLOGY AND BIRTH RATES: Eugene Volokh and commenters

here

[Speculation-a-go-go. I find this sort of discussion more interesting in the way it exposes the assumptions and underlying worldviews we bring to the table than for the particular predictions made. Odd that no one has yet brought up the experience of bonding with the baby during pregnancy. But it's already an interesting discussion, and promises to become more so. --Eve]
posted by Eve at 5:16 PM | link 0 comments

MODELS OF MARRIAGE: Gabriel Rosenberg

[In re "what I guess is the 'procreative' model of marriage": In the "Future of Family Law" report here (PDF), you can see what Dan Cere calls the alternative model of marriage--the "conjugal" model--and how he describes it. --Eve]

At MarriageDebate.com, Maggie Gallagher notes a significant development from the Lewis decision, especially from Judge Parrillo's concurrence. The opinion cites work of Dan Cere to the effect that there are competing models of marriage out there. The Massachusetts court in Goodridge espoused the "close personal relationship" model of marriage which the New Jersey court rejected in favor of what I guess is the "procreative" model of marriage. I'm trying to figure out what model of marriage I would espouse. My views on marriage are pretty well summed up by Maggie Gallagher and Linda Waite when they wrote in The Case for Marriage:

Despite changing attitudes toward sex and gender roles, the substance of the marriage vow as Americans understand it has changed surprising little. Marriage is, above all, seen as a permanent union ("until death do us part"), which includes the promise of sexual union ("forsaking all others"), of financial union ("with all my worldly goods I do thee endow"), and of mutual support ("to love, honor, and cherish").

Each part of this public vow is part of the punch marriage packs, the secret to its power to change lives. But if one part of this package is more important than the others, it is probably the promise of permanence.

The promise of permanence is key to marriage's transformative power. People who expect to be part of a couple for their entire lives--unless something awful happens--organize their lives differently from people who are less certain their relationship will last. The marriage contract, because it is long-term, encourages husbands and wives to make decisions jointly and to function as part of a team. Each spouse expects to be able to count on the other to be there and to fulfill his or her responsibilities. This expectation of a long-term working relationship between husband and wife leads to substantial changes in their behavior, of which the most important is, perhaps, what economists call specialization.

I believe that model of marriage, the "promise of permanence" model can and should be applied homosexual couples as well as heterosexual couples. I don't believe that marriage is essentially a procreative union, although of course many married couples will procreate and marriage is the optimal setting for procreation because of how it transforms the relationship.

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posted by Eve at 3:57 PM | link 0 comments

NY GAY MOMS PROTEST: From the Poughkeepsie Journal

After waiting nearly six years for a birth certificate for their adopted son, an Ulster County lesbian couple refused to accept it because it listed one of them as the father.

"I suppose it's valid, but it certainly is absurd. It creates a whole new set of problems," Diane Pinero-Zucker said.

Pinero-Zucker, and her partner of nearly 25 years Deborah Pinero-Zucker, adopted a boy born in Virginia in February 1999. The adoption was finalized in December.

Along with two other couples, the Pinero-Zuckers filed a lawsuit against the state of Virginia when it refused to issue a birth certificate naming them as parents. Virginia law prohibits adoption by same-sex couples.

In April, the Virginia Supreme Court ordered the state to issue the birth certificate in a 5-2 decision.

When it did, Diane Pinero-Zucker was listed as the mother and Deborah Pinero-Zucker was listed as the father. It also did not use their legal name of Pinero-Zucker.

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[eta: Elizabeth Marquardt comments here; plus readers comment. --Eve]
posted by Eve at 10:18 AM | link 0 comments

GENDERLESS MARRIAGE AS A CLOSE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP: Maggie Gallagher

The appeals court decision in New Jersey upholding marriage represents a new set of arguments. One set, including the phrase "genderless marriage" used by the court, comes from Monte Stewart and Bill Duncan from the Marriage Law Foundation. The concurring opinion borrows heavily from the work of Dan Cere, who is the author of our new family law report, "The Future of Family Law." He is responsible for pointing out that an alternate theory of marriage is being adopted by the courts and much of the academy based on "close relationships theory," a phrase the judge also used.

These are significant developments in the law and the public debate.

Some excerpts from the court's decision and concurrence:
Majority opinion, at 31-32:

The essential premise of the Goodridge plurality opinion--that the institution of marriage is simply an "exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other," id. at 943--constitutes a normative judgment that conflicts with the traditional and still prevailing religious and societal view of marriage as a union between a man and a woman that plays a vital role in propagating the species and provides the ideal setting for raising children. Consequently, unlike Loving, Goodridge does not establish a right of equal access to marriage, regardless of race or any other invidiously discriminatory factor, but instead significantly alters the nature of this social institution.

Concurring opinion, at 3-4

No doubt, plaintiffs have taken their bearings from the "close personal relationship" model of marriage espoused in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003). Citing "respect for individual autonomy," id. at 949, the Goodridge plurality defined marriage simply as "the exclusive and permanent commitment of the married partners to one another[]," id. at 961; "the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others[]," id. at 969; and "at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family." Id. at 954. Given this narrow view, it is no wonder the Goodridge plurality concluded that "our laws of civil marriage do not privilege procreative heterosexual intercourse between married people above every other form of adult intimacy and every other means of creating a family." Id. at 961.

This distillation of marriage down to its pure "close personal relationship" essence, however, strips the social institution "of any goal or end beyond the intrinsic emotional, psychological, or sexual satisfaction which the relationship brings to the individuals involved." Monte Neil Stewart, Judicial Redefinition of Marriage, 21 Can. J. Fam. L. 11, 81 (2004) (quoting D. Cere, "The Conjugal Tradition in Post Modernity: The Closure of Public Discourse?" at 6 (2003) (unpublished)).

Concurring opinion, at 5

When plaintiffs, in defense of genderless marriage, argue that the State imposes no obligation on married couples to procreate, they sorely miss the point. Marriage's vital purpose is not to mandate procreation but to control or ameliorate its consequences -- the so-called "private welfare" purpose. To maintain otherwise is to ignore procreation's centrality to marriage.

Concurring opinion, at 7

Plaintiffs simply have not posited an alternative theory of marriage that would include members of the same sex, but still limit the arrangement to couples, or that would otherwise justify the distinction.

entire decision is here
posted by Eve at 4:14 PM | link 0 comments

NJ COURT DECISION: Elizabeth Marquardt

...Well, a judge there recently ruled that the same-sex partner of a woman who gives birth using a sperm donor is automatically the second parent on the child's birth certificate, without needing to adopt the child. If judges there are ruling that a woman who neither conceived nor adopted a child is the mom, based on her relationship with the other mom, and if this assumption is based on the law that allowed husbands whose wives used sperm donors to be named as fathers on the child's birth certificate, how long can the argument against SSM in New Jersey hold?

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posted by Eve at 3:24 PM | link 0 comments

MAKING LOVE MAKES BABIES: Maggie Gallagher in Nat'l Catholic Register


This begins a series of Register articles in which author and syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher explains love and marriage to her grown son.

Here's the place to begin. Every time you make love, you could be making your first-born child.

This is not a moral argument. Not yet. It is just a fact of life. Burn it into your memory.

Every time you make love, you could be making your first-born child.

Sex makes babies. How could such an obvious truth have gotten lost? But it has. Never underestimate the capacity of human beings to fool themselves. ...

So since I was a teen-ager, smart people have said things like "we have separated sex from reproduction." I've gone to countless conferences where men with Ph.D.s intone similar kinds of statements.

And yet, what I found was: The scholars kept saying this, but the girls kept getting pregnant. At Yale, where I went, most girls who got pregnant had abortions. Nobody but they, and maybe their best friends, knew about it. Not even the guy was told, unless the guy was a steady boyfriend. (Another dear friend told me about getting a surprise call from a guy three months after their brief one-night stand had resulted in an abortion. She was weirded out. How do you talk to a guy you barely knew whose child you have just aborted?) ...

The natural end of sexual desire is not just "procreation" as a bald mechanical device, a mechanistic means for the production of infants. The natural end of sexual desire is the human family, the kind that can only be created by coupling in the deepest sense of the word.

The alternative, which you see all around you, is to create a culture in which our bodies are our enemies. The fact that sex produces babies becomes a fact to be fought, and worse, a fact to be repressed from consciousness in order to create space for the odd, new sexual right (where did they find it?) to have sex whenever and with whomever one wants, without producing any children. That's the sexual revolution in a sentence: ABR, anything but rape.

More on this later. What I'm asking from you now is simply to have the courage, the manliness to face this one simple fact:

Every time you make love you could be making your first-born child.

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posted by Eve at 3:16 PM | link 0 comments

MA GROUP TO SEEK REFERENDUM AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE: From the Boston Globe

Opponents of same-sex marriage will announce tomorrow an initiative petition to put a constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot in 2008 that would ban such marriages, lawmakers and activists involved said yesterday.

The decision to mount the effort for a Defense of Marriage Act ballot question follows months of intense debate among foes of same-sex marriage, many of whom worry that a competing compromise measure already before the Legislature will fail when it comes up for a vote later this year.

That compromise, which could go on the 2006 ballot, would ban same-sex marriage but establish civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, a provision opponents call ''marriage lite." Its opponents prefer a ban on same-sex marriage, without civil unions, even if the plan means waiting until the 2008 ballot. ...

The prospect of a new amendment with no provision for civil unions will probably undermine support for the competing, compromise measure. That compromise measure must clear the Legislature once more in order to be placed on the 2006 ballot.

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posted by Eve at 3:14 PM | link 0 comments

THE END OF EUROPE: Robert J. Samuelson

Europe as we know it is slowly going out of business. Since French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed constitution of the European Union, we've heard countless theories as to why: the unreality of trying to forge 25 E.U. countries into a United States of Europe; fear of ceding excessive power to Brussels, the E.U. capital; and an irrational backlash against globalization. Whatever their truth, these theories miss a larger reality: Unless Europe reverses two trends -- low birthrates and meager economic growth -- it faces a bleak future of rising domestic discontent and falling global power. Actually, that future has already arrived. ...

It's hard to be a great power if your population is shriveling. Europe's birthrates have dropped well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children for each woman of childbearing age. For Western Europe as a whole, the rate is 1.5. It's 1.4 in Germany and 1.3 in Italy. In a century -- if these rates continue -- there won't be many Germans in Germany or Italians in Italy. Even assuming some increase in birthrates and continued immigration, Western Europe's population grows dramatically grayer, projects the U.S. Census Bureau. Now about one-sixth of the population is 65 and older. By 2030 that would be one-fourth, and by 2050 almost one-third.

No one knows how well modern economies will perform with so many elderly people, heavily dependent on government benefits (read: higher taxes). But Europe's economy is already faltering. In the 1970s annual growth for the 12 countries now using the euro averaged almost 3 percent; from 2001 to 2004 the annual average was 1.2 percent. In 1974 those countries had unemployment of 2.4 percent; in 2004 the rate was 8.9 percent.

Wherever they look, Western Europeans feel their way of life threatened. One solution to low birthrates is higher immigration. But many Europeans don't like the immigrants they have -- often Muslim from North Africa -- and don't want more. One way to revive economic growth would be to reduce social benefits, taxes and regulations. But that would imperil Europe's "social model," which supposedly blends capitalism's efficiency and socialism's compassion.

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posted by Eve at 3:13 PM | link 0 comments

CANADIAN SSM AND THE CHURCHES: Calgary Herald editorial

...The problem for Christian churches is that such constitutional niceties have proved to be no protection. Since 1992, when the Supreme Court of Canada "read-in" sexual orientation to the Canadian Human Rights Act, homosexual rights have consistently bested religious conscience in courts and before provincial human rights commissions. Christians have watched with growing alarm the erosion of their free-speech rights to proclaim their reading of biblical teaching on homosexuality. ...

Minister Paul Martin last week promised dissident Liberal MPs increased religious protections in Bill C-38.

But, he promises what he cannot deliver. No politician can control how courts or commissions will rule in the future. Gay advocates are well aware of that. That's what enables Bourassa to boldly articulate what amounts to an anti-church strategy, without even the reasonable caution of waiting for Martin's bill to pass.

Yet, while Bourassa's confidence of an impending victory is well-placed, he will find that it is ultimately transitory. The church has a moral authority parallel to that of the state -- and while the state can tax it, or even ban it, it can never own it.

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posted by Eve at 5:31 PM | link 0 comments

THE LANDSCAPE OF THE SOUL: Camassia

Amba wrote a nice response to my post about my parents' divorce, in which she reflects on what her own marriage means:

Jacques and I don't have kids, but the longer we have stayed together, the more I've had this weird sense of responsibility to keep on staying together for the sake of the other people in our lives who somehow count on us as a unit, a phenomenon. Friends we've been out of touch with for a few years have sighed with wonder and peace to find that we're still together. A lasting relationship between two people becomes like a feature of the landscape in the lives of their friends and family. Starting out as a promising sapling, it thickens like a tree, becoming ever more solid and stout and trustworthy. People can rest in its shade. Eventually, it comes to seem as permanent and mythic as a local mountain’s silhouette against the sky. At times when the going got rough and I’ve fantasized about some other direction for "my life," I've realized that my life is not only my own any more. The need would have to be imperative for me to destroy what has become a landmark for others.

...

The real survival value of mating for life, it seems to me, is what amba described -- that the marriage accrues an entire network of relationships around it. This would have been even more true in societies where the only real social structures were kin-based. Every marriage creates not just one relationships but a multitude of in-laws, meetings of his friends and her friends, and sometimes half- and step-siblings. If the couple divorces and marries others, all the relationships change. So even if the divorce doesn't do anything to that particular couple's kids, one can see how it would affect the continuation of the community and therefore the species.

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posted by Eve at 4:35 PM | link 0 comments

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.

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posted by Eve at 4:21 PM | link 0 comments

BRAVE NEW FAMILIES: Eve

Re the post below.

For my part, I share Tom's concern about the parents' romantic partners (if any)--there's no reason to think fathers' boyfriends would be exempt from the problems mothers' boyfriends often cause for kids. And I would want to ask what their decision not to marry means for their child's future and their future as parents together. Is the idea that they want to hold open the possibility of setting up house with a sexual partner in the future? Because if so, they're intentionally bringing a child into a situation whose stability they're willing to jeopardize for the sake of their romantic relationships, which... sounds like something I have a big problem with when heterosexuals do it, you know?

As far as whether there's "something about a romantic relationship between the parents that's important," well, the world is big and woolly, and there are more kinds of love than sexual love. This couple may well end up loving one another very deeply, even if they are never sexually attracted. But if they were to marry and raise their child they would forge a strong bond to one another that, as one FS commenter put it, can outlast "romantic love, which waxes and wanes."

Possibly-related MD.com posts here, here, here.
posted by Eve at 4:01 PM | link 0 comments

BRAVE NEW FAMILIES: Tom Sylvester

I had my college reunion last weekend. A friend told me about a family situation Judith Stacey would love to study. The expecting mother is a lesbian, the expecting father a gay man, and they are good friends and have bought a house and live together. They don't plan to marry, but plan on staying together and raising their child in their home. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. One the one hand, it's the bio mom and bio dad planning to live and raise their child together. On the other hand, though they plan to put the baby first, I'm sure each parent will seek other romantic interests, which I would think could prove disruptive of a stable home life. How should we think of this type of family structure? All else equal, is it preferable to gay or lesbian adoptive parents? Or is there something about a romantic relationship between the parents that's important? If they did actually get married, would Maggie Gallagher approve? To readers who disapprove of same-sex marriage, do you think this is an appropriate way for a man or woman who's homosexual to become a parent? I'd love to hear comments.

link w/comments
posted by Eve at 3:38 PM | link 0 comments

NJ APPEALS COURT: STATE CONSTITUTION DOES NOT REQUIRE GAY MARRIAGE: From the Associated Press

[Decision is here. --Eve]

A state appeals panel ruled Tuesday that New Jersey's Constitution does not require the recognition of gay marriage.

The 2-1 decision rejected the efforts of seven same-sex couples to marry, although the case is expected to go to the state Supreme Court.

The ruling said legislators will have to change marriage laws before same-sex couples can marry in New Jersey. ...

In dissent, Appellate Judge Donald G. Collester said that if marriage is defined strictly as a heterosexual union, then couples are denied the right to marry the person of their choice, and so have no real right to marry. ...

New Jersey also contended that it had addressed the concerns of gay couples through a domestic partnership law that went into effect in 2004. That law offers same-sex couples various rights, including making medical decisions for each other, and tax benefits.

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posted by Eve at 12:40 PM | link 0 comments

THREE NEW BOOKS EXAMINE PROS, CONS OF SSM: From the San Francisco Chronicle

Mark Jordan -- a Roman Catholic convert and professor of religion -- has a stock answer when his airplane seatmate asks, "So, are you married?"

"No," he replies. "It's not legal yet in Georgia."

If that doesn't stop the conversation, Jordan may go on to explain how the Bible doesn't really bless monogamy, condemn homosexuality or anoint what conservatives call "traditional family values."

And even if queer matrimony were blessed by the Bible and the Great State of Georgia, neither Jordan nor his gay partner wants anything to do with it.

"We don't want a marriage," he said in an interview. "The institution is too broken for us to sign on."

Jordan, the Asa Griggs Candler professor of religion at Emory University, was in San Francisco last week to promote his book, "Blessing Same-Sex Unions -- The Perils of Queer Romance and the Confusions of Christian Marriage."

It is one of three books coming out just in time for June brides and grooms who want to look at the history and theology of marriage. In "What God Has Joined Together -- A Christian Case for Gay Marriage," David G. Meyers and Letha Dawson Scanzoni challenge the notion that Catholics and conservative evangelicals hold the true "Christian" position on holy matrimony. Author Stephanie Coontz takes an even longer view of marriage in "Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage." ...

Nevertheless, Jordan said he understands how some gay couples want a marriage "because it feels like the ultimate form of acceptance by their churches and families." ...

Jordan lost a partner to AIDS in the summer of 1995, and watched the various ways his friends responded to the news that their lovers had AIDS.

"Some people bolted, and some people didn't. I'm really interested in the people who didn't, the people who thought this romantic, giddy, erotic relationship is actually serious enough for me to spend three years, five years, going through hell with this person," he said.

"All of a sudden there was a premium on fidelity, not in the sexual sense, but in the sense of staying with someone in sickness and health, until death do us part."

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posted by Eve at 4:06 PM | link 0 comments

STATE TAKING SIDES: From the Canadian Catholic News

Passage of the federal government's same-sex marriage law would mean the state is "taking sides" in the debate between two competing views of marriage, says a McGill University professor.

Daniel Cere told the special legislative committee studying Bill C-38 that the bill needs to allow people who hold the traditional understanding of marriage to continue to express their views.

Cere said passage of Bill C-38 would mean the "close personal relationship" view of marriage would "win" against the view of marriage as a heterosexual social institution for the procreation and raising of children.

"By dismissing the biological bond of conjugal marriage and making family diversity the fundamental norm that must be promoted, the state sets itself up against the ideal of the intact family.

"What about those many areas of federal jurisdiction that the government could have offered a few tangible safeguards: charitable status, communications, academic freedom, freedom to profess and promote the historic conception of marriage in the public sphere?" he asked. "Not a whisper."

Cere suggested the bill's preamble remove references that suggest the traditional view of marriage is discriminatory, and include an acknowledgement that many Canadians hold a differing view of marriage and that these are "legally valid but competing conceptions."

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posted by Eve at 3:17 PM | link 0 comments

STUDY: SYPHILIS RATES DROP IN COUNTRIES w/SAME-SEX PARTNERSHIPS

Data from Europe suggests that national recognition of same-sex partnerships leads to significant reductions in syphilis rates, according to a new study by a Swarthmore College economist.

"The evidence shows these laws could dramatically reduce risky sexual behavior and the social costs of some sexually transmitted infections," says Thomas Dee, an assistant professor of economics. "However, the results may be even more important because of what they suggest are the likely effects of gay marriage on the degree of personal commitment in same-sex relationships."

Dee studied data from Europe, where 12 countries have introduced national recognition of same-sex partnerships between 1989 and 2003. While these "gay marriage laws" reduced syphilis rates by 24 percent, their effects on the prevalence of gonorrhea and HIV were smaller and insignificant. Dee's study was published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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posted by Eve at 3:15 PM | link 0 comments

GAY MARRIAGE IS A "DEEPLY CONSERVATIVE IDEA": Interview with Dale Carpenter

...In a wide-ranging interview, Carpenter built an intriguing and provocative case that political conservatives not only ought to oppose the proposed Minnesota Marriage Amendment, conservatives ought to support same-sex marriage. In fact, conservatives ought to encourage it.

"There are two separate issues here," Carpenter said. "One is a matter of what the courts should do. Should the courts be involved in basically forcing gay marriage on an unwilling population? My answer to that is no.

"The second question is a policy question. Is gay marriage radical and therefore a dangerous change in marriage? My answer to that is also no." ...

It's Carpenter's position that an amendment stating "the courts shall have no jurisdiction over decisions of the Legislature regarding the gender requirements of marriage" (or words to that effect) would protect against judicial activism. That approach still leaves the Legislature, elected by the people, free to decide the gay marriage issue as a legislative issue, not a constitutional issue. ...

On the subject of gay marriage itself, Carpenter believes that whatever view one takes of homosexuality, a political conservative ought to support gay marriage.
"Given that there are homosexuals in the United States, and they are not going to be eliminated by any means acceptable to the American people, what is to be done with them?" he asks.

"Are we to shut them out of traditional institutions like marriage? To marginalize them to where they become hostile to traditional values? What would conservative social theory predict would happen to a group of people cut off from the stabilizing influence of marriage?

"I think it would say a lot. All kinds of pathologies -- drug and alcohol abuse, rampant promiscuity, more depression, less productivity, more dependence on government and so on. Marriage has a very powerful positive affect."

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posted by Eve at 8:25 PM | link 0 comments

CANADIAN GAY ADVOCATES FIGHT CHURCHES' CHARITY STATUS: From the Ottawa Citizen

Churches that oppose same-sex marriage legislation have good reason to fear for their charitable status, a leading gay-rights advocate is warning.

"If you are at the public trough, if you are collecting taxpayers' money, you should be following taxpayers' laws. And that means adhering to the Charter," says Kevin Bourassa, who in 2001 married Joe Varnell in one of Canada's first gay weddings, and is behind www.equalmarriage.ca.

"We have no problem with the Catholic Church or any other faith group promoting bigotry," he said. "We have a problem with the Canadian government funding that bigotry."

Several Liberal backbenchers have been pressuring Prime Minister Paul Martin to amend the controversial gay-marriage bill, which is now before the House, to protect the tax status of churches that refuse to perform such marriages.

Under current rules, donations to religious groups are tax-privileged as long as the church refrains from partisan political activity. ...

Even if the churches are in compliance with tax laws --with or without an amendment to the marriage bill -- they could still be subject to a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But this is unlikely to succeed, Mr. Broder said.

"It's hard to see how that would happen," he said. "For example, I'm not aware of any religious group having been challenged on their refusal to marry divorced people." ...

"There are charitable activities that are legitimate within faith communities," [Mr Bourassa] said.

"Political activities are not charitable activities."

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posted by Eve at 7:49 PM | link 0 comments