OTTAWA, June 27, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Legislation tabled by the Conservative government last year to allow foreign homosexual couples to divorce after taking advantage of the country’s liberal same-sex “marriage” law has sailed through the Senate.
It had previously escaped a word of debate in the House of Commons.
C-32 will amend the Civil Marriage Act so that the “marriages” of foreign same-sex couples who travel to Canada for the ceremony will be considered valid in Canada, “even if one or both of the non-residents do not, at the time of the marriage, have the capacity to enter into it under the law of their respective state of domicile.”
The bill allows a “new divorce process” to be established that “allows a Canadian court to grant a divorce to non-resident spouses who reside in a state where a divorce cannot be granted to them because that state does not recognize the validity of their marriage.”
Gwen Landolt, national vice-president of REAL Women Canada, told LifeSiteNews that the amendment will turn the country into a “Mecca for homosexual marriages,” because if homosexuals “don’t like [their] partner, [they’ve] got a special out here.”
“This bill allows special privileges for lesbian and homosexual couples,” she said. “They who were screaming that they want ‘equality’ in marriage, now want something quite different: special rights for divorce that are different from heterosexual marriages.”
When MPs unanimously voted to adjourn the Commons for the summer last week, all parties agreed to pass a handful of bills without further debate, including Bill C-32, an act to amend the Civil Marriage Act. The Commons declared the bill passed at all stages, and sent it on to the Senate last Wednesday. The Senate passed it by Friday.
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“This whole chaotic fiasco is insulting to grassroots supporters of the Conservative Party,” said Jack Fonseca, spokesperson for Campaign Life Coalition, to LifeSiteNews.com.
The bill arose from a case of a lesbian couple, one residing in the UK and the other in Florida, who married in Canada in 2005 and then split shortly afterwards. Neither couple ever took up residency in Canada.
Since their marriages were not recognized in their respective countries, they could not obtain a divorce.
When they applied for divorce in Canada, the government rejected their application.
Federal Department of Justice lawyer Sean Gaudet told a court at that time that the couple was not in fact legally married.
“In this case, neither party had the legal capacity to marry a person of the same sex under the laws of their respective domiciles – Florida and the United Kingdom,” Gaudet stated. “As a result, their marriage is not legally valid under Canadian law,” he said.
The government’s upholding of the law whereby it withheld divorce from the couple stirred mainstream media into a frenzy. The Conservative government was charged with intolerance, hate, bigotry, and with having a secret agenda against homosexuals, despite the fact that it was acting according to recognized law.
As a result of the backlash, Canadian federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson tabled Bill C-32 in February 2012 to permit same-sex couples to obtain a divorce in Canada, despite critics saying that the proposed legislation did not comply with the Canadian Divorce Act nor with private international law.
“What’s crazy is that Prime Minister Harper is willing to undermine the sovereign laws of foreign nations who don’t recognize these unions as legal ‘marriage’,” said Fonseca. “We know that many of the same-sex attracted people who got married in Canada, did so in order to return to their own country and challenge the law there.”
“Is that what you call respectful foreign policy?” he asked. “It’s not even respectful of the Canadian taxpayer, whom, I presume, now has to pay for foreigners to clog up our courts.”
Fonseca called the legislation a “betrayal by the Harper government of conservative principles and policy.”
“On the books, the Conservative Party is supposed to be a pro-traditional marriage party, but in practice, its supporters are treated to the bizarre spectacle of a supposedly ‘conservative’ government championing homosexual marriage…and even homosexual divorce,” he said.
Landolt agrees with Fonseca: “What this means is that Canada is a fop for the homosexual agenda, not for equality, but for inequality. Whatever the homosexual activists want, they’re getting.”
Contact information:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
Fax: 613-941-6900
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: https://pm.gc.ca/eng/contact.asp