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Of course, these attempts at de-stigmatising same-sex couple relationships did not
go uncontested. The government consultation on marriage equality also provided a
platform for Canadian opponents of same-sex marriage. Although not as prominent
as its counterparts in the US, the religious right in Canada could be relied on to
deliver familiarly apocalyptic opposition to marriage equality (Reidel, 2008). Rita
Curley, of the Catholic Women’s League, was particularly graphic in her assessment
of marriage equality:
To redefine marriage to be more inclusive of homosexuality is to create a
new morality in which homosexuality is not merely tolerated but is
normalized and would branch out into sexual activity with babies, children of
both sexes and with animals.
(cited in Larocque, 2006, p. 95).
This is the ‘slippery slope’ argument par excellence: claiming that recognising samesex
couples will bring about a sexual relativism that will lead to the normalisation of
paedophilia and bestiality. It is also interesting that efforts to destigmatise same-sex
couple relationships are met with this kind of highly stigmatising response.
Despite the Canadian government seeking to buy time by mounting a consultation
exercise, provincial courts continued to race ahead of the political momentum in
striking down prohibitions on same-sex marriage. Most decisively, the Ontario Court
of Appeal ruled in Halpern v. Canada (Attorney General) in June 2003 that not only
should the definition of marriage be amended to include same-sex couples, but also
that marriage licences should be granted with immediate effect to the same-sex
couples who had brought the case. On the same day, and in the absence of an
immediate appeal from the national government, twenty-one same-sex couples
married in Toronto. Again, the Halpern ruling emphasises the social significance of
marriage:
Marriage is, without dispute, one of the most significant forms of
personal relationships. For centuries, marriage has been a basic
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