If you’re even a little bit curious about how the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms can protect the equality of lesbians and gay men, I can’t encourage you strongly enough to go read this post on Section 15, the Charter’s equality provision.
Mark, who runs the Section 15 blog, sets it all out in plain language – including the meaning of that contentious phrase “in particular”. If you disagree with C-38, you’ll at least understand how court after court could have ruled the way they did.
And if you do agree with C-38, you’ll come away with all the arguments you need to leave that loudmouth brother-in-law reeling at your next family reunion.
I was pleased to get the Charter defs laid out. Much help in those family moments. (Why do people always think that their relatives will agree with them?)
But I continue to live in frustration about this one. I’ve tried “If you don’t think people of the same sex should get married, make sure you don’t marry someone of the same sex.”
It stopped the conversation a few times.
Now I tell this story:
I was talking with my daughter about prejudice. She was learning the word in school in the context of how our country treated new immigrants from Asia and South Asia. Head taxes, internment, lack of business or political rights.
I described prejudice as believing something bad about people because of who they are or what they look like. And then making decisions or rules about them that treated them differently than everyone else.
Since then Рto reinforce the concept РI’ve asked her “So when aboriginal people and women were not allowed to vote, what was that?” Prejudice, she says.
How about when black people had to sit at the back of the bus or drink from a separate fountain? Prejudice.
Or when someone assumes that an old person is too old to help or a young person is too inexperienced to have a say or a poor person is a criminal? Prejudice.
Or when when the government says you can’t get married if you’re gay and want to marry someone of the same sex? Prejudice, she says.
So to community leaders, politicians, religious groups, family members I say: It’s not a hard concept. The ten year old gets it, why can’t you?
Sign me up for her first campaign, Marie!