The issue seems mysteriously to have become dead in Canada, perhaps because everyone is too polite to risk hurting anyone’s feelings by pointing out that marriage isn’t just one of a Baskin-Robbins type assortment of flavours of relationships. In the US, the contribution of David Blankenhorn, a self-described liberal Democrat who opposes same-sex marriage, to the debate has been invaluable, and I wish more Canadians of all political persuasions paid more attention to him. Liberals who believe insisting upon the traditional definition of marriage is judgemental (it is – and that’s a good thing) and libertarians who think that marriage is a private good and therefore not the concern of government or the wider society (it is a definite public good) could learn a lot from him. Here’s a concise summary of his work on marriage and parenting, in the LA Times today.
by
Leave a Reply