December 21, 2004 - Newfoundland Same-Sex Marriage - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

Newfoundland court brings province in line with others on same-sex marriage. As Canadian politicians debated the merits of same-sex marriage, Canada’s judges were holding up existing laws to the equality provision in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Sexual orientation was not one of the listed protected grounds, but in 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada “read in” sexual orientation as a protected ground. While most Canadians agreed that gay and lesbians should be protected from discrimination in jobs and housing for example, a certain number felt very strongly that “marriage” was going too far. However, in the sober climate of the court room, the arguments against gay marriage, such as it being an institution for raising children, did not stand up to a charter challenge since there were many examples of gay and lesbian couples having children and many examples of heterosexual couples not. In 2003, parliamentarians voted to keep the definition of marriage between a man and a woman, but on June 10, 2003, Ontario’s Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that defining marriage exclusively between a man and a woman contravened the rights of gay men and lesbians. As other court cases were heard in other provinces, the result was the same. On December 21, 2004, the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador came to the same conclusion, one of the last provinces to do so. On July 20, 2005, the Parliament of Canada caught up to the court decisions, passing the Civil Marriages Act, legalizing same-sex marriage. That made Canada the fourth country to do so. On December 6, 2006, the new Conservative government brought forward a motion to re-open the debate; it was defeated by a wider margin than the vote to allow same-sex marriage.

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Further episodes of Human Rights a Day

Further podcasts by Stephen Hammond

Website of Stephen Hammond