From Colin Burke re same-sex "marriage".

All of us opposing an institution by government of "same-sex marriage" must realize there is in Canada now no legal basis for denying "gays" the "right" to "marry." Sodomy is legal. When an action is not illegal, there is no legal basis to forbid people from contracting to perform it. All we can do then is object to the terminology they employ to describe their contract. If both (or more) parties to a mutual-sodomization contract demand that the state enforce all those conditions by which they bind themselves as partners to a sodomizing contract, the state then can ignore the plea of an aggrieved partner for redress, only with the effect of encouraging people to break their legal contracts freely entered. Fining people heavily for calling that particular sort of contract a "marriage" would have little effect on the reality of the situation.

The real fault of government here is its assuming actual authority over agreements it cannot itself originate--at least, not without forcing people by law to "marry" certain others according to its own choice. As some Scholastic philosopher said, "Authority resides in authors." Spouses are the authors of their marriage, and they alone, so far as merely civil regulation is regarded, ought to authorize the state to enforce such conditions as they are willing to commit themselves to. The social dignity of marriage then would accrue from the place in civil life which the spouses themselves accorded it, and Catholics who authorized the state to enforce the tangible terms of any really Catholic marital covenant ought then to find their marriage regarded with far more respect by the public generally than "married gays" who pledge not even sexual fidelity.

The state could easily protect the sanctity of marriage by forbidding all illicit sexual relations without ever presuming to define marriage or have anything to do with originating it. It ought to never have been allowed to do these latter, and we should take advantage of the current dispute to demand that it relinquish the authority it has usurped.

Requiring the state to honour all private contracts not actually outlawed, and giving the state only that authority over any given marriage which the spouses might delegate to government, would protect the indissolubility of Catholic marriage at least. The Church could then oblige Catholic spouses in their purely civil contracts to forbid the state to dissolve their marriage and even require the state to hold them to their permanent vows, which even the spouses could not later make only temporary without being able to travel back in time.

Requiring the state to enforce all agreements to which citizens freely bind themselves, which they themselves demand that the state enforce, might even lead to the courts' having to uphold the bylaws of Normal Coition League whose members bound themselves to accept any sodomy on their own part such penalties as that association deemed right for members freely belonging. The courts could refuse to do so only by ruling a man might not legally submit himself to a penalty he himself set for what he deems his own wrongdoing. That would be a flat rejection of democratic principle. Accepting it would mean that "diversity"--within the same nation; it ought to be among diverse nations--upheld different standards with equal vigour to equal effect, which "diversity" now does not.

Port au Port, NL