First Adding gays to Canada's common law "marriage" Still happened relatively.

Second, Canadian Common law "marriage" is nothing like "real' marriage. Canadian common law "marriage" offers absolutely none of the protections of civil marriages because one needs to PROVE they deserve common law status to even be covered by the law, if what is offered as proof is rejected, the person is SOL. Even then the protections are not guaranteed, instead of holding property in common, a person needs to PROVE the DESERVE what property they are asking for. To try to claim that gays should accept such a crappy alternative to Marriage and that was some sort of REAL progress is INSULTING.

In short, Canadian Common Law marriages SUCK big time. If I were you I would not offer that up as something to be proud of regarding Canada's record on gay rights. When Canada added gays to the common law marriage laws, They COULD have done the RIGHT thing, giving full marriage rights and confirmed gays' equal status under the law. But NO, the Canadian governments confirmed that Canadian gays were second class citizens not deserving of the full and equal rights in regards to marriage, don't even deserver the better protections of most domestic partnership law, they only deserve second class citizenship. And even at that the gays will have to PROVE they are WORTHY before we will grant them any protections, oh, and even if thee prove they are worthy, they will still have to prove how much they deserve. Phhht. Not something *I* would be proud of if I were Canadian.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/2011 10:47PM by MJ.

seems so many severed bonds or questing people for some form of companion After being severed from countless tbm masacres (eh marraiges) - leave many soured on seeking legal re connect via marital bliss (sarcasm) legal mariage.

THAT SAID, some seriously do feel marriage is only valid or supported/ supportable for the purposes of having securing or raising children, and seriously feel they do no harm interupting interfering or interceding (heh) on behalf of some married person without children under the age of 18. . . for they really 'feel' there is 'no point.'

its more than operating room rights, and legal disruptions. Its having someone else have more say in your own life & possessions' than YOU if a pose from your not spouse' family chose to. . . even if you shared them with him. its strangers or relative strangers (funny words to go together) who either didn't or rarely get along making treatment decisions on your loved one or YOU. Its not having your best friend by your side in the hospital, not having your closest best friend to lean on as you walk with an IV, not having your closest best best firend on the planet speak for you when doctors speak over and through you- your best best best friend love like air support air surrounds u there by your side filling out forms advocating for you- when you have no voice you are so down.

thats what its about.

children huh? biological reproduction models uh hm. I think its a lover & friend whose a river to swim in, to walk in, to listen. I think its that lover & friend whose like the road I drive on. to me, spouse.

taught me to walk after two surgeries, let me lean on him speaking softly lift, heel, toe through the conversation first on the road, then when I wouldnt' fall down, on side walks with dips at driveways. sat in the biopsies. waitin in waiting rooms. legs enfolded snuggled cuddled spooned upside down sideways right side up frontwards backwards hes my blanket I'm his blanket. voices always voices after surgery waking up besides the nurses I hear him calling me.

dream lover. shared story. tell where you fly through which forests at night as I held you in my arms.

in a life's rough & rugged way let us sail although mostly we go camping until we're one man down. Oh my god ah I have loved you. don't you know a hard life, is not horrible, its just hard & Love mmmmmmm sun shines, rainy mist down comforters moments of bliss. everyone's lifeis hard at times.

marraige can be made of this.

I have some gay Canadian friends who kept me apprised of what was going on up there. Full marriage equality came relatively recently (14 years now?), but it proceeded much more quickly in Canada, and without the rancor that still is occurring here.

Provinces were overturning same-sex marriage bans in pretty rapid succession. When the Canadian SC declared the remaining bans to be violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there was almost no uproar at all. Ironically, the province that was in the forefront of approving same-sex marriage was Quebec, the formerly very conservative Catholic province. Who'd have thunk back in the 1950s that that would even be possible. Boy, did that province turn on a dime after Vatican II, but I digress.

Steven Harper and the Conservatives came to power shortly after SSM was legalized nationwide. They had run on a promise to investigate the change. After the election, the Conservatives hummed and hawed for a while, then finally held a vote on whether to hold parliamentary investigation on the same-sex marriage issue. The Conservatives made it a free vote, which meant the MPs did not have to vote with their party, they were allowed to vote their conscience. (Party discipline if much firmer in Canada than in the US).

Anyway, the vote to hold hearings was defeated, the Conservatives breathed a sigh of relief, and never brought the subject up again.


On a personal note, I had been planning to retire in Canada, so I was very familiar with Immigration Canada regulations. After same-sex marriage was legalized, I got a new copy of the regs, just because I was curious how they would be changed. In particular, how would they handle SS couples from countries like the US, where same-sex marriage was not an option.

It turned out that in that rather lengthy booklet, only 3 sentences had to be slightly revised. Nothing had to be revised to accommodate couples from countries that did not allow same sex marriage. Common law couples already could apply for immigration. All they had to do was have some sort of documentation that they had been cohabiting for a period of one year. Both having the same mailing address was sufficient.

The reason almost nothing in the immigration regs needed to be reworded was that the regs were drawn up not to punish same-sex couples, but simply to regulate immigration. OTOH, US adoption, marriage, inheritance, and other laws will need major revision in some states, because they were drawn up with the specific intention of being punitive to same-sex couples.

So yes, Canada did a lot of things right, and did them sooner and more willingly, and had less of a mess to clean up from the get-go, than the US, which still has much of the mess, and is still being dragged kicking and screaming into marriage equality.

So, sorry, but I don't get all the gratuitous insults (IMHO) being hurled at spaghetti oh. Usually when I see posts with as many all caps words as MJ used to address spaghetti oh, it is some wing nut screaming that the US is not a democracy, it is a republic. I've never quite understood why the wing nuts come completely unglued at the word democracy, and I don't understand why MJ is having a melt down over how awful Canada is. They started off from a better position, and fixed their laws faster. That strikes me as a good thing. Not perfect, but good.

I read the original post of this thread last night and decided not to engage as I figured that I was either not being clear or MJ was doing all he could not to understand what I was saying. I didn't see the point in carrying on. And I was tired of the ad hominems.

I think you've communicated the argument brilliantly. Thanks.

"Those that do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it"

He is saying, basically, to look to the past for insight into who we are now, and guidance as to how we should act in the future.

To deny Canada's past prejudicial, discriminatory, thus bigoted past actions is to deny an important opportunity to learn from past mistakes.

For all your objections, the original point I made, STILL STANDS and all of your red herrings didn't change ANYTHING ABOUT THE POINT I WAS ACTUALLY MAKING.

All you did was dig your heals in to defend Canada at all costs, a behavior which caused you to be blind to the legitimate point I was making.

Which was that gays in Canada learned the importance of marriage and its legal protections the EXACT SAME WAY that the gays in the USA did. All your "yammering" (a description of your BEHAVIOR, thus not an ad hominem) about how Canada is now simply does not change what happened to gays IN THE PAST.

You can not understand the point I am making if you continue to talk and frame this discussion in terms of what is going on now, because my point is about what happened IN THE PAST.

Your single minded defense of Canada is admirable, but it is blocked communication between you and I.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2011 03:01PM by MJ.

All those cognizant, articulate points you made?

Yammering!

But it's a behavior you can change. So knock off the articulation!

The truths Spaghetti oh used were not valid in the context of the discussion at hand. They were simply red herrings to divert attention away from the point being made, thus in the context of the discussion, they were yammering in that they did not actually address the point being made.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2011 03:15PM by MJ.

Canada has discriminated in the past.

And all other points of discussion were ancilary or red herrings no matter how true because Canada has discriminition in its past.

Gotcha.

Sounds like a fun discussion for everyone involved.

and to try to deny valid points. But hey, if you do, more power to you.

Bottom line, Canada still discriminated against gays for almost all of the existence of Canada.

How nice of you to say that that makes Canada so much better because they stopped a few years before the USA.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2011 03:43PM by MJ.

I like LaBatt's and Molson Golden. mmmmmmmmmmmmmm... hockey beer.

Just sayin'...

Ron

Exmormonron, "I reject your point" about those particular beers.

I have never had them.

Rejected!!!

hmmm... Still wondering if MJ is just racist.

Have a story about the tradgedy in Japan, and MJ can't help but vomit out everything he hates about Japan in multiple threads.

Take a topic that one would think would be nearer and dearer to his heart about another county... And a big fat nothing about what he hates about them.

Oh ya, that country is largely Caucasian.

I also like Sapporo and Asahi. Mmmmm....


Ron

DNA: “…that country [Canada] is largely Caucasian.

I guess it depends on what your definition of 'largely' is. Here's some information about “Canada’s ethnocultural mosaic” (and yes, one's perspective is shaped by which area of the country you're in, as large "ethnic" populations tend to concentrate in large urban areas such as Vancouver in the West and Toronto and Montreal in the East):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/archives/canadas-visible-minorities-top-five-million/article677116/

(Newspaper article from March 2009)

"The number of visible minorities in Canada has cracked the five-million mark for the first time in history, representing 16.2 per cent of the country's total population, new census data released Wednesday show.

"The growth in the visible minority population, driven largely by immigration from non-European countries, soared 26.2 per cent between 2001 and 2006, five times faster than the 5.4 per cent increase for the population as a whole, Statistics Canada reports."


Census Canada Stats:

http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/DEMO52A-eng.htm

(2006 figures):

Population: 31,241,030
Ethnic Minorities: 5,068,095


Paper:

http://www.sfu.ca/~pendakur/pendakur_2017.doc

(Date unknown)

"In 2001, about one-eighth of Canada’s people were visible minorities. This proportion will grow to about one-fifth by 2017 because visible minorities comprise a disproportionate share of immigrants, and because visible minorities disproportionately are of child-rearing age. Canada’s visible minority population is predominantly urban and dominated by a few large groups. Now and into the future, about three-quarters of visible minorities live in Canada’s three largest cities of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. By 2017, half of the visible minority population will be in two ethnic groups—South Asian and Chinese populations will each be about 2 million (Statistics Canada 2004, DRAFT).

"Canada’s visible minority population has increased rapidly since the 1960s when immigration regulations were changed to allow substantial intake from Asia and Africa. Forty years ago, only 2 percent of the population (about 300,000 people) could be classified as visible minority. Twenty-five years later, in 1986, there were about 1.1 million visible minorities living in Canada. A mere 15 years after that, through a combination of immigration, births and intermarriage the 2001 Census recorded four million visible minority persons.

"As to the numerical smallness of visible minority populations, one may argue that 13% of Canada in 2001 is a small proportion, and even that 20% of Canada in 2017 is relatively small. However, visible minorities are not evenly spread across Canada—almost three-quarters of visible minorities live in the Census Metropolitan Areas of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. In Toronto and Vancouver, just under 40% of the urban population is visible minority, and by 2017 it may be over half (Statistics Canada, 2004 DRAFT). This concentration can be more pronounced at the level of the municipality (as compared to the CMA). For example, almost half the population of the City of Vancouver, and almost 60% of that of its suburb, Richmond, is visible minority. So, in the particular areas where visible minorities are most likely to be found, they are hardly minorities.

"Visible minorities may not be numerical minorities in Canada’s largest cities in 2017. Statistics Canada (2005, DRAFT) suggests that approximately half the residents of the Toronto and Vancouver CMAs, and approximately one-fifth of the residents of the Montreal CMA, will be visible minorities by that time. If birth rates for visible minority families should prove slightly higher than those underlying the projections, Toronto and Vancouver could be characterised by “visible majorities” and white minorities."

---

There are pros and cons and unknowns to all the issues about immigration, integration and even identifying people by ethnicity, far more than can be addressed here, or should be, given that it's largely off-topic for this board, not to mention quite tangential to this thread. But I did want to address the statement about Canada.

Re the thread topic, I didn't see the original thread being referred to - I'll go back and look for it - but for now I'd say I agree with the informed statements of BoJ about Canada and its striving for equality for all, in all ways. Yeah, it's not perfect and we've had our share of inequality and injustice perpetrated through the years but we are labelled a "liberal democracy" (in some quarters) and we definitely have high ideals as a matter of national identity and strive to apply them in all spheres, for all who live here. The fact that there have been inequalities is regrettable but at least we can say we try to correct them as time goes on, as and when we can. Yes, there's still a long way to go, particularly wrt issues for First Nations peoples. And we have marriage equality in the entire country yet there are ongoing instances of "gay-bashing" even in the most "liberal" of areas. But we try and we hope for better things for everyone.

I was in Canada ONE time, and it was creepy.

Everything looked like America, but it was slightly off.

Plus, everyone was very polite and nice to me.

And I axed a lot of people questions about stuff, and they gave me answers without telling me where to shove it. AND they were more than HAPPY to answer my questions - and I was a total stranger!

I was weirded out.

Canada discriminated against me and others like me for most of its history and *I* am the raciest for pointing that out?

BULL SHIT.

Japan Discriminates against women and I'm the racist for pointing that out?

BULL SHIT.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2011 02:22PM by MJ.

MJ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Canada discriminated against me and others like me
> for most of its history and *I* am the raciest for
> pointing that out?
>
> BULL SHIT.
>
> Japan Discriminates against women and I'm the
> racist for pointing that out?
>
> BULL SHIT.

The whole point was that you aren't racist against Caucasian Canada, but are racist against Asian Japan.

I am being critical of BOTH Japan and Canada over discrimination. So, how is it that my being critical of a Caucasian country is not racist but my being critical of a Japanese country is?

Sorry, the fact that I am accurately pointing out discrimination by Caucasians as well as other races indicates that I do not single out a single race. I am equally critical of all CULTURES (cultures being different than race) that discriminate, even my own Caucasian "race".

It is difficult to see how you clan claim that I am a racist when I being as critical of my own race as I am about a different race.

Oh, and their being nice to you did does not mean they did not discriminate against gays.

Oh, yeah, I've been to Canada many times, I have been treated nice some times and virtually ignored others, simply because I did not speak the language they wanted me to speak. I like Canada, as I like Japan, and I like the USA, but that does not mean they are all free of issues that they should legitimately be criticized for. I still fail to see how my offering legitimate criticism of my "race" and other races makes me racist. Oh, and I forgot to add that two Canadians in Calgary threatened to beat me up just because I was American, but a third talked them out of it.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2011 03:38PM by MJ.

Since I can't reply in the other thread....

Yes, I think that the way a country acts today is much more important in how I view that country than what it did historically.

I wasn't around for the passing of the laws that are archaic, like the Jim Crow laws. (Which are startlingly recent in historical perspective) Why would I view MY America by what my grandparents parents did, or even my parents?

I guess you and I just have a different perspective. I care more about what is happening in the present. I'd like to point out that I am not yelling, calling you names, or even accusing you of anything.

No, Sorry, I disagree. One must learn from the past or they repeat their mistakes.

To focus on the future and use it to negate what has happened in the past, as Spaghetti Oh, and seemingly you are doing, is to deny reality, to ignore a learning opportunity and is flat out dangerous.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2011 03:09PM by MJ.