A gay activist in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, was arrested Sept. 4 after he chained himself to a chair at the Service New Brunswick center because provincial officials wouldn’t let him change his name.
Art Vautour-Toole married his husband, Wayne Toole, in Ontario where same-sex marriage was legalized this summer, and later changed his name on his federal Social Insurance card. But the province has refused to alter his driver’s license and medicare card.
The protest caused service-center officials to push a ‘panic’ button which led to the building being evacuated. Vautour-Toole was then taken into custody for creating a disturbance.
‘The province of New Brunswick and the rest of the country have to wake up,’ Wayne Toole told the CBC. ‘We’re not going to be oppressed and pushed down and called names any more. This is stopping and this is just the beginning.’
Courts in Ontario and British Columbia rewrote the definition of marriage this summer to include same-sex couples. The federal government is in the process of extending those rulings to cover the rest of the nation. Foreign gay couples can buy a license and get married in Ontario or British Columbia the same day.