Full Comment: Where are all the gay brides and grooms? (National Post August 02,2007)

Barbara Kay asks: Where are all the gay brides and grooms?

I am indebted to a faithful reader, Joseph Beaudoin, who occasionally writes for Insight. The facts below were gleaned from an article by Mr. Beaudoin that now appears on that publication's Web site.

Preamble: In one of the first columns I ever wrote for the Post, I argued that the whole push for gay marriage in Canada was limited to a few bellwether political activists, and that in fact gay marriage was not something the rank and file, so to speak, had any interest in. I felt and still do that marriage, traditionally an institution irrelevant to "non-breeders," is not high on most gays’ agenda for the good life. Lesbians, of course, hard-wired as all women are to want children, present a different social profile, but I also surmised that in general lesbians are less avid for traditional family life than heterosexual women.

Now that the stats are flowing in, it seems my intuition was correct.

Facts: In 2003 Canada was the only country in the world permitting gay marriages from extra-territorial residents. Out of 21,981 marriages performed in BC that year, 776 were same-sex marriages: 422 female couples and 352 male. Of the 774, Canadian residents numbered 341, that is, 1.54% of the total marriages for that year. In 2006, the city of Toronto issued same-sex marriage licences to 107 Canadian couples, 338 American and 479 from “other” countries. Only 107 Canadian? Not what you would call a demonstration of the so-called “pent-up demand” we were led to expect.

But let’s move on for a truly revelatory stat. In the first half of 2007, Toronto issued a total of 7,513 marriage licences, of which 320 were for same-sex marriage. Of those, 118 were American, 201 were for other-country residents, and – how’s your math? – that leaves, er, one Canadian couple. The shrinkage isn’t for want of a target demographic, for this bustling city of approaching 3 million people is home to Canada’s largest gay and lesbian population, and whatever that is – let’s say conservatively 100,000 (that’s probably a very low estimate) – there have to be many couples. If even 3% of the population was homosexual, and they were marrying at the same rate as heterosexuals, Toronto would have issued 225 same-sex licences by now.

As Mr Beaudoin notes in his article, American politicians might want to take a hard look at these numbers as the 2008 U.S. elections loom with the inevitable question of gay marriage on the table. The conclusion they can fairly draw from the Canadian stats is that gay marriage was never more than an ideological symbol.