A story in today’s Globe & Mail claims that the Canadian government is refusing to acknowledge the marriage licenses that Canada issued to same-sex couples who traveled from abroad to get married.
This decision, which reverses policies set in place in 2004, was only revealed when a lesbian couple petitioned for divorce. They were told that no divorce was possible because their marriage wasn’t legally recognized by Canada, the same place that issued the marriage license in the first place.
The question of whether this also means that the government will stop issuing licenses to non-residents, how it will affect immigration policy, same-sex marriage rights of Canadians, and so on.
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Sheesh. I’ve read elsewhere that the chaos of marriage laws for same-sex people is creating all sorts of problems when people want to get divorced. Perhaps this will contribute to pressure towards resolving this once and for all in the direction of equality.
And these problems work in both directions for same-sex couples. I have a friend from a U.S. state that does not recognize same-sex marriages, but who nonetheless had to go through a divorce process when their relationship dissolved, as their long-term cohabitation triggered the states’ shared property laws.
Ugh – what is the government’s stated rationale for the change? It seems very capricious.
For the record, the Globe & Mail has published three different versions of articles featuring people rebuking this decision. The latest features Dan Savage.