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The Walrus - Traditional exports

Published: 29 March 2011

When the American Right needed courtroom-ready arguments against gay marriage, it looked to three academics from McGill…

The battle for gay marriage in California has been a tennis match between the courtroom and the polls. In May 2008, the Golden State’s supreme court ruled in favour of same-sex matrimony, but the victory was short lived: less than six months later, Californians voted in Proposition 8, a bill that repealed the decision. Its proponents campaigned by appealing to the gut, claiming in their literature that gay marriage undermines traditional matrimony, and that liberals had gone behind voters’ backs and convinced “activist judges” to redefine marriage for the rest of society…

The long fight for same-sex marriage in Canada spurred a cadre of thinkers united against it: intellectuals who could write op-eds, present briefs before parliamentary committees, and serve as expert witnesses in court cases. Chief among them was a troika hailing from Ď㽶ĘÓƵ: Paul Nathanson (who is openly gay) and Katherine Young, experts in religious studies; and Margaret Somerville, a pioneer in applied ethics with armfuls of honorary degrees, who has rounded out her impressive CV with consulting gigs for the World Health Organization, various UN bodies, and the Law Reform Commission in Canada.

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