Gay Marriage: Does That Mean a Happy Marriage Anymore ?

A lot is being written about gay marriages in Canadian newspapers and countless other periodicals - both scholarly and otherwise ! The issue is currently being dealt with in the Canadian Parliament once again - i.e., a simple series of deep knee bends that MPs make to show their current position on the issue (and also to get the blood circulating again after those long hours of sitting in the same position). It is interesting that when it comes to healthcare and education policy and legal decision-making, concerned citizens and organizations are allowed to participate and are heard throughout the country. When it comes to the issue of gay marriages, they want a select few who are supposed to represent the whole country of 30 million people to vote on something that has the potential to destabilize the whole institution of marriage in the years to come. The system took "homosexuality" out of the DSM a few years ago and it is therefore, no longer viewed by clinicians as a mental disorder and is now considered "normal". The system has now seen it fit to bend religious and moral rules and indeed, in some scriptures our cosmology and the concept of the divine. Given our persistent culture of deference to authority (which is probably why we want to legitimize gay marriages in the first place), we are left to accept whatever law parliament passes without question or full debate. I wrote a few of these words in response to an article earlier this morning and the short mesage which comprised of barely thirty to forty words was not allowed to be published under their comments section. It seems that the whole network of those in authority have placed a wall between the public and those institutions that structure our everyday lives in this system.

The issue of economics however, still remains. Canada lives in a global community. It has dual citizenship agreements with several nations - most of whom do not legally accept gay marriages. How will this impact on issues of inheritence of estate or passing down of wealth when a last will and testament is unavailable? For example, if you have a gay marital partner here in Canada and have property in India, then: who should get the property after your death - your gay partner here or your next of kin living elsewhere, in India or perhaps the USA ?