Savage Love
Takes a licking
All I want is my boyfriend to let me get flogged
Published: October 26, 2011
Q:
In your advice to the Straight Best Man, you suggested that the first gay couples to legally wed in both Canada and the United States ended up divorcing and that this fact was largely unknown because anti-divorce and anti-gay marriage evangelical Christians have essentially dodged the issue in a bid to divert attention from their own spectacularly high rates of marriage implosion.
While the first American same-sex marriage ended in divorce, I can happily report that the first legal same-sex marriages in Canada are still going strong 10 years later. A gay couple, Joe Varnell and Kevin Bourassa, and a lesbian couple, Anne and Elaine Vautour, were married in a joint ceremony on Jan. 14, 2001, at Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto (MCCT). At that time, the government was still refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. To solve this problem, the church, on advice from their legal team, did an end run around the pre-authorized license requirement, using the ancient, but perfectly legal, Christian tradition of proclaiming the banns of marriage. While the government refused to register the marriages as valid, on June 10, 2003, the Ontario Court of Appeal declared that the marriages had been legally performed, and ordered the Province of Ontario to register them immediately. The court also ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and ordered the province to begin issuing marriage licenses for same-sex couples that same day.
Both couples remain happily married, having renewed their vows in a public ceremony at MCCT on the occasion of their joint 10-year anniversaries earlier this year. —Nice Thing To Be Wrong About, Eh?
A:
I'm happy to stand corrected — I'm delighted — and I'd like to send my belated congrats to Joe & Kevin and Anne & Elaine on the occasion of their 10th anniversaries. Here's to many, many more happy years together!
> Email Dan Savage
We welcome user discussion on our site, under the following guidelines:
To comment you must first create a profile and sign-in with a verified DISQUS account or social network ID. Sign up here.
Comments in violation of the rules will be denied, and repeat violators will be banned. Please help police the community by flagging offensive comments for our moderators to review. By posting a comment, you agree to our full terms and conditions. Click here to read terms and conditions.
comments powered by Disqus
To comment you must first create a profile and sign-in with a verified DISQUS account or social network ID. Sign up here.
Comments in violation of the rules will be denied, and repeat violators will be banned. Please help police the community by flagging offensive comments for our moderators to review. By posting a comment, you agree to our full terms and conditions. Click here to read terms and conditions.
Full Feed