BEYOND CONJUGALITY
Recognizing and Supporting Close Personal Adult Relationships
-- The Law Commission of Canada --

"Canadians enjoy a wide variety of close personal relationships that are important to them.
Many marry or live with conjugal partners. Others have emotional and economically important relationships
outside of marriage and conjugality. They may share a home with parents, grandparents
or a caregiver. Sometimes it may be sisters. Other times, best friends.

"Making choices in one's personal relationships is among the most cherished of values in Canadian society.
The state cannot create healthy relationships; it can only seek to foster the conditions in which close personal relationships
that are reasonably equal, mutually committed, respectful and safe can flourish.

"This requires a fundamental rethinking of the way in which governments regulate relationships."

The legitimacy of our relationships should not be based on whether or not
we are having (or presumed to be having) sex.
Our consensual intimacies are none of the government's business.
"Conjugality" should have no place in law.

The state should not deem one brand of meaningful connection as more legitimate than any other.
Instead, governments should recognize any relationship we define for ourselves: husband and wife; lovers; caregivers; committed friends; relatives; people unrelated by blood or adoption -- all deserve equal respect.

Access to benefits should be based on individual need, not relationship status.
Partners should not have to live together. They should not have to be a "conjugal" couple: sex, or its absence,
should be irrelevant. So should sexual orientation.

Governments should not try to redefine "marriage" to include same-sex couples.
They should stop trying to define it at all.

The Commission said marriage is a religious rite: historically connected with the union of two souls as one;
with cohabitation, conjugality, and procreation. Governments in Canada must "pursue objectives
that can be defended in secular rather than religious terms."

Marriage in the eyes of God (any god) should be left to religious institutions.
Governments bound by the Canadian Charter of Rights, guaranteeing freedom of religion, have no right
to order any religion to define "marriage" in a way that might not fit its beliefs.

Anyone connected in mutual commitment, care, and support should be free to register as a legal partnership.
People married by religious authorities could also register. Marriage would be just one of many possible
relationships recognized in law. People in all of them would be seen by governments
as equal citizens -- none "first-class," and none less so.

The LCC did say: "Parliament and provincial/territorial legislatures should move toward removing from their laws the restrictions on marriages between persons of the same sex." That was the last of their 33 recommendations
-- as if saying: If there have to be laws on marriage, let them include same-sex couples.
But the other 32 led to writing "marriage" out of law altogether.

Beyond Conjugality goes beyond marriage, gay or otherwise,
to respect for all of our most meaningful connections.

Beyond Conjugality is available on the website of
The Law Commission of Canada
http://www.lcc.gc.ca

Free copies can be ordered from the Law Commision, online or at
1100 - 473 Albert Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H8
(613) 946-8980

Prepared for
The Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario
Coalition pour les droits des lesbiennes et des personnes gaies en Ontario
Box/CP 822, Stn/Succ. A, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5W 1G3 (416) 405-8253 / Web: www.web.ca/clgro / Email: clgro@web.ca

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This page: http://www.rbebout.com/getfree/lccweb2.htm
October 2002 / Posted on this site: November 15, 2002
Rick Bébout © 2002 / rick@rbebout.com