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Manitoba Says Marriage Commissioners Must 'Marry' Gays or Resign

WINNIPEG, September 27, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Manitoba judge ruled on September 16th, that the definition of marriage in Canada is unconstitutional. Justice Douglas Yard ordered the definition of marriage to be "reformulated to mean a voluntary union for life of two persons at the exclusion of all others." The government refused to contest a court ruling ordering it changed.

The activist judge made Manitoba the fifth Canadian province, after the Yukon, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec to have been mandated by activist court decisions to redefine marriage to include same-sex partners.

The same day as the ruling, letters went out to all 600 of Manitoba's marriage commissioners informing them that they must either be prepared to perform the ceremony for homosexual partners or resign.

Trucking company owner and marriage commissioner, Gil Dube said, "I will not perform a same-sex marriage, so based on that, I am left with no choice but to resign, back out or whatever." Ministers of religion are exempt from the ruling for the moment, but there is no protection for non-ordained persons whose religion prevents them from participating.

Various commentators have pointed out that once marriage has been divorced from its original meaning and purpose, any definition can be imposed including polygamy.

Mark Steyn writing for the Western Standard said that there is no reason to believe that in our age of concessions to multiculturalism, that Muslims would not start agitating for legal recognition of their polygamous arrangements. He wrote in the September 13 edition, "If it's a Muslim who finally makes it to the Supreme Court of Canada with a polygamy case, I'd reckon their lordships will rule that forbidding it is an unwarranted restriction of their charter rights. And I'd wager that a few of those justices will be happy to license polygamy if only to prove that their demolition job on "traditional marriage' was legally grounded rather than mere modish solidarity."

Previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage of Nova Scotia decision: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/sep/04092403.html

Canadian Press coverage: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1845&ncid=1845&e=5&u=/cpress/200...

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