Restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a second court ruled Sept. 6.
The decision by a Quebec Superior Court echoed a July ruling by an Ontario Superior Court. Both rulings give the federal government two years to comply before being preempted by the judiciary.
“In Quebec, the [plaintiffs] have been able, since July 2002, to solemnize their relationship by entering into a civil union, which provides all couples with similar rights and responsibilities,” wrote Madam Justice Louise Lemelin. “But they are still denied access to marriage, which is an important societal institution.
“One cannot avoid the conclusion that offering benefits to gay and lesbian partners under a different scheme from heterosexual partners is a version of the separate-but-equal doctrine. That appalling doctrine must not be resuscitated in Canada four decades after its much heralded death in the United States,” she said.
Lemelin told the government to replace the marriage-law phrase “a man and a woman” with the phrase “between two persons.”