It begins

A roar of rumours that a bill allowing same-sex marriage will be introduced today in Canada's House of Commons. Brace yourselves: it's gonna get even nastier from here on in.

There are the spittle-spewing bigots who want them homos shot, and we'll be hearing from them... endlessly. And then there are the "reasonable" folk. Like Margaret Somerville, the guru of proper ethical behaviour and a bigwig at McGill University's Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law. She argues that marriage has always been about procreation, rather than being a public declaration of commitment. Her side believes wedded bliss "is the principal societal institution that symbolizes, protects and nurtures the inherently procreative relationship between a man and a woman, that is, the primary relationship through which life is transmitted to the next generation and within which children are nurtured and reared. In other words, marriage is, and has always been across millennia and through every type of society, a cultural institution based on a biological reality, that of procreation" (as she wrote in the Montreal Gazette over the weekend). In short, marriage is hetero because we say it is.

Somerville admits that some heterosexuals deviate from the norm (infertility or a decision to remain childless), but this does not change the essentialist trope of marriage.

During a talk she gave a year ago at McGill, Somerville also argued that children have a human right to a mommy and a daddy, both in terms of knowing their genetic heritage and in terms of upbringing. For the sake of her own argument, she really should know that many gay men and lesbians with children are building families with mothers and fathers both, somtimes providing three or even four parents. This wouldn't matter for Somerville, however, since her argument states quite clearly that all the exceptions should be ignored. Convenient, that. Perhaps there's some other reason for the opposition?