10:33 p.m. - 2003-06-16
Family Ties
I'm not certain if it was a good karma or bad karma day, but the issue was front and center all day. It's one of those flashpoint emotional debates where it really doesn't matter how you handle it, someone's going to go away mad - especially now when major change may be legislated with one group finally feeling included, while another group is feeling their whole value system is being rejected.
Started off after lunch with the student I share the phone with where I stood on the court case. The issue? Whether same sex couples have the same rights to benefits like pension and health care coverage from employers and the different levels of government as heterosexual couples. It's a Charter of Rights argument on a very thin slice of technical entitlement, that has become the flash point for a debate on what constitutes morality in Canadian society. It's not really a smart place to choose to take a stand.
Our laws are very clear that people cannot be discriminated against based on an identifiable characteristic such as race, faith, gender, or age. Another case that will come to a head sometime in the future, is ageism and sexism as it relates to the insurance industry's discriminatory policies and fees with respect to young male drivers. But I digress.
The young lady in question is feeling that her faith is being discriminated against if the ruling acknowledges a group that her church deems immoral. When I noted that the Charter guarantees everyone the right to their own faith practices, her response was to deny that same sex couples were living within a faith system too. And it just went downhill from there. First of all the old rule about not discussing politics, sex, and religion was taking a triple hit and it was in the workplace. Especially difficult was that in this company discrimination and harassment are grounds for dismissal. If both sides feel that they are the victim of discriminatory and harrassing actions, how do you resolve that? Throw in the right to freedom of expression, and shutting down someone for expressing an opinion really isn't appropriate either. I contented myself with trying to explain the legal basis of the arguments that would be made in the courts based on precedent and charter law, and linked it to the battle women in Canada had to be recognized as perosns in their own right so that they could benefit from the fruits of their own labour. Albertan women were in the forefront of that and were the first women to be appointed officers in the British government when our country was still governed under the British North America Act. I promised I would bring in more information for her tomorrow.
I also reminded her that I've lived in a community, for over 20 years, where the average family structure has been very different than the nuclear family model which has been the common standard in North America since the industrial revolution occurred. Prior to that time, the extended family was the norm and fire and brimstone was preached from the pulpits when the nuclear family model began to replace that out of the economic necessities widespread industrialization created. Alvin Toffler's book "The Third Wave" has one of the most concise descriptions of the sociological dynamics involved, but an equally good fictional read - built around the development of cars and rail travel in England - "Theirs Was The Kingdom" by RF Delderfield also explains the evolution/revolution that occurred.
Because housing is affordable in our community, there have been times where about 30% of the population were single parent households. At times, poverty has forced these non-related families to live together in one dwelling, in order to survive economically. They became de facto family units. In addition, a number of refugee families, made up of those members who survived civil wars and other major disasters, also moved into the community - again because of economic circumstances and because they are accepted as they are here. That means a household can consist of Grandparents with their grandchildren, Aunts with nieces and nephews, and brothers and sisters with the remnants of the older and younger generations still living, gathered up in one household. After years of watching so many people, already dealing with deep emotional wounds, struggling to survive as the families they had become by forces often beyond their control, my own feeling is that a family should be defined as "whatever group of people who choose to live together, by consent or need, where the functions of a traditional family are carried out". Functionality becomes the basis of determining status.
One of the major arguments being brought forward by intervenors in the court case against the argument for same sex couples being called a family, is the economic implications to business and government should the narrow definition of a family be expanded, as it eventually would have to be by precedent, to included all other such groupings. The required expansion of services and benefits would be substantial.
Anyway, I got home and called one of my classmates from high school to set up a time to get together. As we were discussing some of the information we had learned at the reunion, the issue of same sex couples came up again, since some of our classmates were quite open about that. That turned to discussion about what both of us have witnessed in the workplace and the community. Quite frankly, one our Prime Ministers, Pierre Trudeau, might have had the most appropriate responses to such a thorny issue when he noted that the government had no place in the bedrooms of consenting adults.
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