------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 3, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
BIG WIN: CANADA SAYS "I DO" TO SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
By Preston Wood
In an upset to right-wing forces in the United States--not to mention Democrats and Republicans alike--the Canadian government has gone off on its own and announced that Canada will soon change its law to allow same- sex marriage.
Canada, which also defied U.S. pressure to join the Pentagon war on Iraq, will grant full marriage rights based on a June 10 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling. That decision declared that the definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman is invalid and should include any two adults who wish to unite in marriage.
Under pressure from the growing lesbian, gay, bi and trans movement in Canada--and from polls that show the majority of Canadians favor full marriage rights to same-sex couples--Prime Minister Jean Chrétien announced June 17 that the new law would be submitted to the Canadian Supreme Court for review and then put to a vote in Parliament, where the Liberal Party has a large majority.
This victory north of the U.S. border will no doubt spur on the LGBT struggle on both sides of the border. And it will fuel the movement in the United States for equal protection under the law for LGBT people.
Because U.S. law recognizes the legitimacy of Canadian marriages, U.S. courts will soon be forced to grapple with recognizing the union of same- sex couples from this country who get married in Canada.
Right-wing talk shows and conservative columnists across the United States are using this progressive development as yet another excuse to spew vitriolic hatred against millions of LGBT workers and their families, who, like all other workers, produce the wealth of society.
This enormous wealth is of course controlled by the big capitalists. Tools like racism and bias are used to divide and weaken the overall struggles of the workers and oppressed for economic and social justice.
The guarantee of equal protection under law has been trampled by successive governments throughout U.S. history. Equal access to jobs and housing is routinely denied to African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Arabs, Native people and others. Immigrants are rounded up and deported without legal recourse.
LGBT people face discrimination on the job, in the military, housing, etc. In addition, 15 states in the United States still have medieval "sodomy" laws on the books, criminalizing private sexual acts between consenting adults. These laws are used to target LGBT people. Hate crimes against LGBT people have risen significantly under the fire-and- brimstone rhetoric of Bush and his right-wing zealots.
A BATTLE AGAINST DISCRIMINATION, BIGOTRY
Why is the right to marry so important? Beyond the wedding ceremony itself, what is marriage under capitalism?
It is about love and commitment, of course, but it also comprises the rights to spousal medical benefits, tax breaks, adoption of children, social recognition of a partnership, to rent an apartment or buy a house together, civil rights. These are things that affect all workers, and that have often been denied to LGBT people in class society.
To understand better why the issue of same-sex marriage rights is an important question for Marxists to analyze, take a look at the landmark 19th-century work "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State," by the great Marxist theoretician Frederick Engels.
In his book, Engels shows how inequality, the rule of one class over another and the repressive apparatus of the modern state all developed along with the means of production. From pre-class communism to modern capitalism, the means of production have been in constant change, just as everything in nature is always changing.
These changes in how things are produced have determined forms of social organization. This applied both to what social systems developed--e.g. slavery, feudalism, capitalism--and also affected the way people live and love.
Engels demonstrates how, for most of human history, the family as it is known today did not exist.
Before class society developed, people had to live and work in the face of harsh conditions of scarcity. People lived in loose groupings where women were not oppressed or dependent on men. With the growth of technology and skill, though, came the accumulation of surplus and wealth and the development of patriarchal domination.
Eventually, the control of wealth became paramount, and with the development of social classes came the oppression, brutalization, and super-exploitation of women.
Gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans people were also super-repressed by the growing ruthless power of church and state. Falling outside the patriarchal family system of procreation and inheritance, queer lovers and trans people challenged and threatened the new order.
When the great Stonewall rebellion occurred in New York City in June 1969, it shocked the world. LGBT people, oppressed under capitalism, fought back as a group and thus changed history. In the words of Harry Hay, a founder of the early gay rights movement, the "me" of isolation became the "we" of united militant action.
Since Stonewall, ongoing struggles for equal rights and against bigotry have helped pave the way for greater unity and solidarity among all the workers and oppressed peoples. The struggle for full marriage rights for all that lies ahead can help strengthen that unity and mount a serious challenge to the capitalist agenda of divide and conquer.
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