We will be coerced to violate our deepest beliefs
We’ve encountered Archbishop Timothy Dolan before. He wrote a blog post about the Catholic church’s way with those sexy little children who keep seducing its dear innocent priests, or rather about the world’s harsh attitude to the church’s way with the tiny little harlots.
What causes us Catholics to bristle is not only the latest revelations of sickening sexual abuse by priests, and blindness on the part of some who wrongly reassigned them — such stories, unending though they appear to be, are fair enough, — but also that the sexual abuse of minors is presented as a tragedy unique to the Church alone.
Italics his. Self-pity and moral obtuseness also his.
Now he’s pitying himself over gay marriage and how like North Korea it is.
Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.
And then they can force everybody to live according to the new definition of “marriage,” so if they say “marriage” is between a priest and a map of Akron, Ohio, then all priests have to marry maps of Akron, Ohio forthwith. It’s so unfair.
But back on planet earth, the archbishop sets about explaining to us what marriage actually is – which seems silly, since he is professionally sworn to have nothing to do with the thing, while millions of other people have actual experience of it, so why pick him to explain it? Who knows, but anyway, he does.
Marriage is not simply a mechanism for delivering benefits: It is the union of a man and a woman in a loving, permanent, life-giving union to pro-create children.
So true, except for the fact that it isn’t. It isn’t necessarily to procreate children, it isn’t necessarily permanent, it isn’t even necessarily loving. 0 for 3.
But never mind; he knows what he means.
Yes, I admit, I come at this as a believer, who, along with other citizens of a diversity of creeds believe that God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage a long time ago. We believers worry not only about what this new intrusion will do to our common good, but also that we will be coerced to violate our deepest beliefs to accommodate the newest state decree.
Meaning…what? Nothing, except that he and people like him won’t be allowed to take their revenge on gay couples. That’s all – that’s what “violating their deepest beliefs” amounts to. It doesn’t mean they’ll be forced to do anything (except shock-horror perform a marriage if that happens to be their job), it just means they won’t be allowed to persecute people.
(If you think this paranoia, just ask believers in Canada and England what’s going on there to justify our apprehensions.)
That they’re not being allowed to take their revenge on gay couples and, if they have jobs that involve performing marriages, they have to do that for gay couples.
Hateful man, hateful church, hateful “beliefs.” A pox on all of them.
Agreed. A pox on all religionists who spout this filth. One day, humanity will be rid of them, but not for some time. I shall not live to see it, I’m sure.
“We will be forced to violate our deepest beliefs.”
A hazard of following Bronze Age morality in the modern world.
I STILL don’t know what the State is doing involving itself with marriage in the first place. It should be just a contract between adults involving such things as property and power of attorney and such. The Marriage part is just entanglement with religion and the State should butt out.
“Yes, I admit, I come at this as a believer, who, along with other citizens of a diversity of creeds believe that God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage a long time ago. ”
If he’s referring to the bible, God variously is cool with polygamy, concubinage, sexual slavery, and a husband’s right to kill his wife if she has no hymen in the old testament, and in the New encourages people not to get married unless they absolutely have to since celibacy is better.
Also, I live in China. It has its problems but is NOTHING like North Korea. The state here certainly does not randomly kill people.
“Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea.”
Anybody who uses a statement like that to make a point should be presumed to be a Fox News commenter, and immediately laughed off the stage.
To be clear, in Canada the existence of legal gay marriage is a complete non-issue. No mainstream religious groups complain about it, no major special interest groups lobby the government against it, and even the very conservative federal government is silent. It’s a done deal, and now just part of the fabric of our society.
And that’s what Dolan really fears, that when gay marriage becomes legal, the skies don’t fall, and men aren’t allowed to marry dogs, and polygamy doesn’t run rampant, and families don’t dissolve. In other words, Dolan is fighting, in part, to keep people from seeing what a fear-mongering liar he is.
I can’t help but see as fundamentally flawed the way marriages are performed in USA or UK. More specifically, the throwing together of the civil contract and the religious rite aspects of marriage.
I find much more reasonable and rational the way things are done in countries like Italy (where I live now), or many others in Europe, where the two aspects are kept separate — as they should be. The future spouses sign the contract/certificate of marriage in front of a registrar, usually a specially appointed employee of the city hall (or even the mayor himself, especially for smaller towns). Then, if they choose so (and the number of those who do is decreasing every year), they can have a “religious wedding/marriage” performed by a priest in whatever rite they wish. This way, the civil contract called marriage is valid for all purposes in law, without depending on the whim of a priest or another, while churches can administer their affairs as they please, without having to complain that the evil state is forcing them to comply with those Satan-inspired filthy secular laws and infringing their freedom or whatever.
I find the way things are done in the United States even more peculiar in the light that while marriages are performed by a priest or the equivalent, divorces are still pronounced by authorities exclusively secular (i.e., a judge) without, presumably, having any bearing on the religious aspect. (Not sure about others, but Catholics don’t accept a divorce pronounced by a judge to have anything to do with the marriage performed by the Catholic Church. The only way to dissolve a marriage in the eyes of the said Church is by obtaining an annulment from the local bishop… or by the death of one of the spouses. Also, divorced and re-married people are considered adulterers, as are people who get, here, a “civil marriage” but don’t undergo the religious ceremony.)
And, for what it’s worth, the performing by clergy of marriages with legal consequences is IMO also a violation of the separation of church and state.
@7…I happen to agree with you, but warn you that your ideas won’t gain much traction.
I advocated in the past for civil unions for all, marriage for religiously inclined, and was eviscerated for my trouble.
Stay far away from the argument.
But, Armand K, is it not the same in England as in Italy? When I was married nearly forty years ago, neither my wife or I wanted priests of any persuasion about, and so we were wed in a London registrar’s office.
Funny, we had a group of atheists in Atlanta the other day using nearly the same arguments as Archbishop Timothy Dolan uses here against homosexuality and marriage equality. I would hope that somehow those ill-informed atheists get wind of this theist’s screed to see how it mirrors their arguments.
And sexual molestation and rape of minors is of course not unique to the Catholic Church, but such rampant, clustered sexual abuse would not have been possible if the Catholic Church hadn’t shielded the offending priests from owning up to their criminal acts publicly and ignored the cries of the victims. Timothy Dolan seems to want us to forget about how the one of the top family value’s of the Catholic Church was to ignore and in fact promulgate and magnify the suffering of child victims of sexual rape and molestation in homes across the world. It’s practically a tradition of the Church by now! Why in the world does anyone listen to these boobs on family values?
@Kevin, #7:
Yeah, I’m aware of the inertia involved and of the views of many… Which still doesn’t mean it’s better the way it is. As for staying away… I fail to see your point. The same reasoning could be applied to virtually any line of thought. For every idea, no matter how rational, logical and clear cut it might be, there is always someone to oppose it — all too often a majority.
@Tim Harrs, #9:
I explicitly mentioned Italy because in this country the two are completely separated, in the sense that all registrars are public servants, not representatives of a church that additionaly have the authority to perform weddings.
Sorry if I wasn’t very clear about England and America. My point was not that the only way of getting married is by a priest. (For that matter, in the US there also is the option of getting married by a judge — at least in some states.) It was that marriages performed by a priest, beside their religious significance also have legal value at all. It is, I think, the only situation where clergy are invested with public authority by virtue of their representing a private organization that happens to be a religious one.
Also, there’s the issue of people not being used to get married by secular registrars… but this is a different kettle of fish.
I support gays having equal legal rights of partnership with straights. I’m just trying to understand the dynamics of how to get there.
I’m unclear about the Archbishop’s problem. Rabbis can refuse to marry Jews to non-Jews because of Jewish law, and that Jewish prohibition seems to be legal by US law. So why don’t Catholic priests refuse to marry gays, wouldn’t that prohibition be legal by US law? Is the Archbishop’s problem that such an explicitly stated prohibition would make the Catholic Church look bad? Is his problem that the negative public perception would diminish his control over his followers?
@Aratina Cage, #10:
Rest assured, they’re not the only ones. I had a discussion along those lines with an atheist no more that a couple of days ago, and I remember the guys from Austin/TX having a caller with roughly the same views in one of their Atheist Experience shows. But well, after all being an atheist doesn’t necessarily imply being 100% free of prejudices and impervious to BS.
A for the family values of the Catholic Church… One of the honored members of the Pontifical Council for Family was for quite some time the (in)famous cardinal Law (v. sexual abuse scandal in the archdiocese of Boston). And, as everyone supposedly knows, the head of the church is the same individual who, as head of the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered child abuse cases be classified as “pontifical secret” (the highest level of secrecy), under pain of excommunication (the harshest punishment in the RCC, reserved until recently for such abominable crimes as attempted ordination of a woman, performing an abortion to avoid the death of a girl, getting married with a non-Catholic or disagreeing with the pope).
And then there’s this: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2072613,00.html
These people have been making me puke recently. The Archdiocese of Boston cancelled an “All Are Welcome” service scheduled around Pride Week, which is a show of authoritarianism quite unusual in today’s society I think. If you can’t even hold a service saying “We disapprove of homosexuality but gays are welcome to church nonetheless” then there’s really very little hope of change.
Except through a long, hard fight.
The only ‘believer’ I know at all well is my 83-year old neighbour, who having fought the C of E most of her life over female priests is now solidly behind gay marriage. Apart from some frothing of the mouth in the Mail and Telegraph in the first few months, the country seems to have absorbed gay civil unions without social unrest or apocalypse. X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent have caused way more moral collapse . . .
Marriage is not simply a mechanism for delivering benefits: It is a mechanism for delivering benefits.
I’m still trying to get over the sheer arrogance, audacity, ignorance of this man. But, then again, there seem to be so many like him that I should no longer be so.
Is he trying to tell us that because his church believes that it speaks on behalf of an omnipotence skydaddy, he believes he has the right to tell everybody under what laws they have to live out their lives?
Peter
@bric, #15:
I wouldn’t expect anything different. I’m still waiting for the total social chaos “they” expect and predict in the countries where gay marriage is recognized. Not holding my breath, though…
One of the things that puzzle me is that “they” don’t seem capable of seeing the difference between allowing “teh ghey” to get married and forcing everybody to marry a person of the same sex. Generally I tend to apply Hanlon’s razor, but in this case I find it really, really hard to believe that so many people can be that stupid.
Just because beliefs are deeply held doesn’t mean they aren’t stupid and wrong.
That’s an interesting point about religious marriages having legal force. I hadn’t thought of that before.
What surprises me (or maybe not) is that a large number of catholics, if recent surveys are credible, actually support gay marriage. Isn’t it for them to be doing something within their church? Frankly I don’t care if RCC Inc performs gay marriages or not. I DO care that gay persons have the right and the ability to marry each other – this is a matter of simple equality of all persons. As long as gay folk can get married at city hall or by a JP or a judge or by UCC or MCC or other willing denomination, let the catholics stew in their own bigotry if they won’t fix it. Soon they’ll be so far behind the contemporary mores that they’ll look like real jerks yet again…..well they are anyway aren’t they?
(If you think this paranoia, just ask believers in Canada and England what’s going on there to justify our apprehensions.)
Exactly what horrible things are Canadian believers here being forced to endure? He doesn’t say, of course, and I’ve heard nothing. Granted, I left the church (and a pro-gay church at that) several years before same-sex marriage became legal here, so perhaps I’m just not listening to the right sources.
It doesn’t mean they’ll be forced to do anything (except shock-horror perform a marriage if that happens to be their job)
Actually, I very much doubt that this priest or his church would be forced to perform a marriage of anyone they didn’t like — they already don’t have to marry non-Catholics, and this is just more of the same. The power to enact the legal side of the marriage contract is at best a convenient adjunct to whatever spiritual function they are carrying out. Now of course, civil marriage commissioners (or whatever the appropriate government official would be in your jurisdiction), yeah, they’re required to marry any couple who shows up and is otherwise qualified, whether or not it passes their personal theological smell test. Just like they also have to issue drivers licenses, building permits, etc, to people they might not approve of.
Other people’s gay marriages.
The stupidity is deep with this Dolan character, but not as profound as his narcissism. What does gay marriage have to do with him AT ALL?!?! I don’t have any truck with Catholicism, but the mere existence of practicing Catholics and the presence of Catholic clubhouses in my town has absolutely zero effect on my life. Why should the existence of gay people and marriage equality effect Dolan or anyone else in his cult?
This is another one of those things that someone is going to have to explain to me slowly and with small words, because i just don’t get it.
I seem to recall that Catholics (or at least some Catholics) require couples to attend some marriage classes with their priest before they get married as a precondition, and there are lots of ways that a priest could refuse to marry two straight people. But pretending the sky is falling is the only way they are able to motivate the people who still oppose gay marriage. What will happen though, is that parishioners that are friends with gay church goers will probably get annoyed with their priests refuse to marry them, potentially leaving their church. But I can’t imagine it being much worse than the rest of the pro-gay exodus from church that’s already going on. And there are plenty of gay priests that I’m sure wouldn’t have as big a problem doing such ceremonies. I’d love to hear more from that subset, but I bet they’d be defrocked instantly.
Dolan’s argument reminds me a lot of the people who argued against public health care, asking us to look at Canada and Britain. And when I did ask my friends in Britain and Canada, they were all pretty happy with it. Same with gay marriage.
What does gay marriage have to do with him AT ALL?!?!
I think it involves a belief in the magical power of words, along with an inability to disentangle different aspects and contexts of a word. 30+ years ago, when I got married in a fundamentalist church, I had no trouble realizing that there were at least two things going on there, that the religious aspects were not the same as the legal aspects. Bu to the Dolans of the world, the government defines “marriage” as some thing (insert the entire Family Law Act and associated jurisprudence here), ergo that’s what marriage is, in all contexts — even (apparently) religious and social ones. Govt changes definition to include gays couples, therefore Christian marriages now suffer from the Gay Cooties, QED. Don’t they realize that seeing things that way implicitly allows the government to define their religion? Of course, at least a few of them want to maintain that equivalence, with the intent that their religion should define governance. They either don’t “get”, or actively oppose, church-state separation.
Thank God he lives in the US, where apparently he is the one entitled to define what family and marriage means.
Does this man condemns divorce and adoption, too?
@ArmondK…it’s your windmill, tilt away. Don’t say that you weren’t warned, however.
Poor Archbishop Dolan! They want to redefine a word! What can he do but scream fascism? Next thing you know, they’ll want to call vehicles with electric motors automobiles!
And, by the way, pay no attention to that so common definition of marriage that involved one man and many women in his most favorite of books.
Eamon
No, I know; I was thinking of the Islington registrar who refused to marry a gay couple and was fired and tried to sue and failed. I was thinking of public employees, not church/mosque ones.
sailor1031:
See, but then a same-sex Catholic couple could legally marry and still come back and sit in on a Catholic Church services and if the evil archbishop then tries to kick them out he will be inescapably seen as the one flouting society’s definition of marriage. Qué horror!
Armand K:
Except that is not the whole picture. Clergy-performed marriages do not have any special legal consequences because priests are bound by the secular law, otherwise thousands of same-sex couples would already be legally married across the USA. The real problem is how one’s religion is held by secular law to have greater importance than one’s right to marry so that a cleric of Cult A can refuse to marry anyone the cleric arbitrarily determines to be misaligned with the cleric’s own bigoted religious belief.
@Eamon(#26)
Ummmm… “gay cooties”? If they legalize gay marriage, does Dolan think that one member of each straight marriage will magically swap gender? If so, is it permanent? Do they take turns? Man/woman, then man/man, then woman/man, woman/woman, back to man/woman… and on alternate leap year days, they both turn into centaurs? I guess any stupid belief is possible from people who believe a cracker becomes human flesh in your belly, but changes back into cracker before it turns into poop.
Certainly, these jackholes seem to believe that the existence of people who do things they don’t approve of, just anywhere on Earth really, is an unfair imposition on them. No one is making them be gay, no one is making them marry someone of the same gender, but they want to manipulate the world to make sure they don’t have to even acknowledge the fact that gay people even exist and might have secular rights that some baby-raping cult can’t take away from them.
As the archbishop says:
Now, doesn’t that just make you want to curl up and die of embarrassment? After all, it’s not possible that resistance to permitting gay marriage has something to do with prejudice against gays! The meaning of marriage is ingrained! So there! Nothing to do with those perverse folk who call themselves gay, even though, after all, let’s be honest now, everyone knows that gay people are really homosexual, that is have “same-sex attraction” and this means — how do you put it now? — that there is something gravely depraved and intrinsically disordered about expressing this attraction (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2357). But that’s not why we don’t want them to be able to marry. God forfend! We love them; we just hate their sin, is all! We certainly don’t want to encourage them to sin more by letting them marry! How cruel can you be? They would end up in hell, and just imagine the pain that Christians will feel, encouraging all those people to do things that will earn them eternal damnation!! Shocking!! Too much for Christians to bear, to think of all those depraved people roasting for eternity. They’ll deserve it, mind, but still, the weight of conscience on poor Christians who have to contemplate that dreadful fate for any of their fellow human beings — well, almost human, then. But of course they’ll get to enjoy their torment in the end, as being one of the blisses of a heavenly reward! Perhaps it’s not so bad, after all!
But, to be serious. What on earth does he mean by ingrained meaning? Has anyone heard of that before? According to the Penguin Dictionary (and what other authority is there?) ‘ingrain’ means “to work (something) indelibly into a fabric”, or “to implant (an idea, moral value etc.) in a person’s mind.” Ah, so he was speaking metaphorically! Now, I understand. But if it were ingrained wouldn’t it be impossible to change it? But it’s been done! Good Lord, man, can’t you see it? It’s been done, and in Canada too, for shame! And Christians in Canada well, if you don’t believe, “just ask believers in Canada and England what’s going on there to justify our apprehensions.” Does he mean that gay people in Canada actually get married?! Yes, apparently. Haven’t seen a lot of believers suffering unduly here, though, unless its simply that they feel ‘icky’ because — well, just because, you know!
Oh goodness, Eric, he explained it – “ingrained” means “God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage a long time ago.” It’s soooooooooo obvious. And settled.
@22: In Canada at least, if you speak against gay marriage, increasingly more and more you’ll be looked at like you have three heads. That’s what they’re complaining about. That’s what they’re ALWAYS complaining about. A big part of it is social acceptance of their bigotry.
As for what’s going on in Canada – well it’s filling up with ooky poofters, that’s what. The whole place is inside out and backwards – campy men and butch women everywhere you look. Along with poutine.
Sailor1031:
It’s unlikely the members will do much as long as it doesn’t affect them. It’s not like the priest is lecturing them on this every week. Heck, he probably never even mentions it if most of his congregation likely supports it (gay marriage). They aren’t stupid. This is at best background noise.
I was raised Catholic decades ago. My parents had no problem with contraception, abortion, gay marriage, assisted suicide, etc. Some of those things went back further based on family size and discussions. I suspect most of the congregation supported many of those things too. As a result, there were certain subjects that just weren’t covered by the priests (provided mostly from the local seminary). Or it was very uncommon. And we had our share of child abuse and rape issues (a recent revelation). Because if they had emphasized the Church position, the congregation would have been horrified and might have stopped attending.
People go to church because their parents did. Their social circle is there. As long as they don’t feel “their” church is bad, they are likely to continue. The bishops and the larger Church is not seen as part of the same organization in practice.
I’m a Canadian, I regard poutine as coercion to violate my deepest gustatory tastes — it’s a redefinition of the meaning of “snack food”. No, no one is actually forcing me to personally eat the stuff. But I still have to walk past the chip wagons where it’s made and sold (fergawdsakes, you can even get it at MacDonalds!) And see people eating the stuff in public. And smell it. Oh, who will rescue me from this horrendous oppression!
God, not the state defines marriage (and, by extension all moral values.)
But since God stopped talking directly to the world some time back we must accept the interpretation of his will via the RCC.
So the RCC, not the state defines marriage (and by extension all moral values.)
Sounds reasonable to me. The state should sit back and be content with administering and enforcing morality as defined by the RCC. After all, that system worked perfectly well for centuries.
(If you think this paranoia, just ask believers in Canada and England what’s going on there to justify our apprehensions.)
I live in Canada and I don’t hear anything going on here. There are no same-sex marriages being performed by the Catholic Church here, as far as I can tell the issue is dead. People get married and no one notices.
Cheers!
Eamon,
I’ll save you by throwing myself on the wonderful poutine. (Not at MacDonald’s though, you’re on your own there.)
What Dolan really means is that Albany should accept his specific religion’s definition of marriage. Two women I know have been married for years. They got married twice: first by a rabbi, and then some years later by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
He’s also implying that he doesn’t have much faith in his god: an allegedly omnipotent being who has to take instructions from Albany, because he and his minions can’t _convincingly_ say “You know those people in Albany are a bunch of incompetents, only marriages in church count.”
In New Zealand, we have a separate institution called a Civil Union. It was basically a way to conveniently make gay marriage equal in the eyes of the law without the religious bigots throwing a too big a tantrum. When my wife and I got married we were one of the first straight couples to choose a Civil Union instead of the religious toned Marriage. It certainly made for a lot of confusion! When I went to pick up the documentation, the clerk at the courthouse looked horrified and said “There has been a terrible mistake, this isn’t a marriage, this if for gay people!” I found the whole exercise very worthwhile. We have several religious relatives and it was a lot of fun explaining why we didn’t wish to associate ourselves with an institution that treats a section of the population as though they don’t exist.
@Aratina: and there’s a problem……?
@Winwar: yeah I know – I was brought up catholic too (but I got better…..). The congregations amaze me though that they are so uncaring about anything and just will not stir themselves to any action to improve their church. They won’t even complain as the advances of Vatican II are dismantled one by one by a core group of fascists who have no authority to do so.
@Eamon: I’m canadian too, and you can add Tourtiere and tarte au sucre to the list.
@sailor1031 ‘Twas being sarcastic. ;)
Whereas, enshrining laws outlawing same-sex marriage, same-sex adoptions, same-sex behaviors, in no way shape or form pose any kind of coercion upon those who believe same-sex couples have the same cultural status and rights as anyone else. Because as we all know thanks to centuries of drool-flecked sermonizing that non-believers couldn’t possibly have consciences, morals, or ethics. Only good practicing Cat-licks like him.
What a load of jack-booted piffle.
Ugh. “Self-pity” is right. So is hyperbole, melodrama, hysteria, histrionics & an absolute lack of social, political or self-awareness.
Fucking whiny little shit. Get over yourself.
Gee I wonder what that guy Dolan has to say about (gasp) Mexico City where gay men can marry their gay men fiances and lesbians can marry theirs. After all that work too, breaking apart those nasty big pyramids to make darling cathedrals that are sinking. . .
I am attending a gala Mexico City wedding of two women friends at the end of July. Oops! I mean two women friends of min are rudely intruding on Dolan and his ilk at the end of July. So if the complete fabric of social life up and unravels I’ll get to see it. Otherwise I’m expecting 1) good music and 2) good food.
@Aratina – I know!
BTW is it too late to say “Fuck Bishop Dolan”?
“….sickening sexual abuse by priests, and blindness on the part of some who wrongly reassigned them…….”
Some…..SOME!!!!!
“…such stories, unending though they appear to be, are fair enough…”
FAIR ENOUGH!!!!. FAIR ENOUGH!!!
Now look here, you’re making me terribly cross.
communiqués from the government can dictate … what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.
hmm… “Most North Koreans face strong social pressure to marry a suitable person of the opposite sex, with the government rarely allowing for divorce.” What’s not to like for the archbishop?
@50: Just goes to show that authoritarians are all basically birds of a feather. The only real disagreement is over who gets to be the authority.
windy, Eamon, spot on. I think a lot of Catholic higher-ups secretly (or not) long for the good old days of yore, when most of Europe was a Catholic North Korea and where you damn well did what you were told and kissed the ring of the Kim Pope or suffered the consequences. Elevating the pontiff to pseudo-godhood (not to mentiong sainting them post-mosrtem) isn’t that far removed from the reverence accorded to the Kim Dynasty and I’m sure if I looked I’d find some spooky parallels between DPRK Party policy and medieval Catholic law too; I’m honestly unsure which would be the less oppressive.
As a UK citizen I would love him to tell me what is going on over here- he has obviously noticed something I haven’t
I was hoping someone would have mentioned what’s happening in Canada. I live in Western Canada (Alberta even) and AFAIK nothing much going on here. My spouse hasn’t changed gender and neither have I. No one is marrying animals or anything. It’ quite the non-issue.