November 2000 Fraser Forum: Anne of Green Gables in the Twenty-First Century
Anne of Green Gables was written in 1908. Lucy Maude Montgomery’s famous story tells of Anne Shirley’s adoption and education by Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. Mark Twain said it was "the sweetest creation of child life yet written." The story has been several times immortalized on the silver screen. It has been serialized on TV and made into a hit musical. The green and white house is part of a national park on Prince Edward Island and is no doubt the most visited literary shrine in Canada.
Last March, in testimony given before the Commons Committee on Justice and Human Rights, Janet Buckingham, a lawyer for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, pointed out that today, under the provisions of Bill C-23, the Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act, Anne could not have been adopted by Matthew and Marilla. The Cuthberts might well have been the ideal couple to look after the precocious and sensitive orphan, and Anne was certainly a light in their lives, but under today’s law they could not adopt her because they were brother and sister.
Most of the discussion about Bill C-23 deals with the highly controversial issue of same-sex marriage. It is probably fair to say that most Canadians are not warm supporters of same-sex marriage. But it is also true that where two sisters live together taking care of their invalid mother or two bachelor brothers have worked the family ranch for 60 years, most Canadians would agree that the tax or pension implications of the relationship of siblings should not differ appreciably from those of a regular marriage.
These kinds of questions have been addressed in a discussion paper recently published by the Law Commission of Canada (LCC). The purpose of the LCC, as with its predecessor the Law Reform Commission, is to recommend improvements to the law to the Minister of Justice and to the legal community.
The usual way the commission goes about its business is to step back from the heat of controversy surrounding a piece of legislation such as C-23, and consider the basic assumptions on which existing laws have been passed. They then determine whether the law still makes sense under current conditions. Usually only lawyers get excited about the results.
In this case, however, it is clear that the LCC report, Recognizing and Supporting Close Personal Relationships between Adults, deals with the real issues involved with Bill C-23 and does so much more intelligently than the actual law. As the report points out, there are many kinds of "close personal relationships between adults." Most involve two people living in the same household and most of these are married to each other. But many such relationships have nothing to do with marriage. Friends can be close without having what the law calls conjugal relations and what normal people call sex. Friends can be of the same as well as of the opposite sex. Like the Cuthberts, brothers and sisters can be close and so can parents and adult children. And, of course, there are conjugal homo- and heterosexual relations without marriage.
Assuming that all such relationships can equally be sources of mutual support, affection, and security—or of pain, exploitation, and violence—then the normal marriage between a man and a woman becomes one among several options. If the law is supposed to support the such good things as physical security, then something like a contract or a "registered domestic partnership" might prove superior to extending the meaning of marriage to cover relations between brothers and sisters or even conjugal homosexuals.
Instead of expanding the concept of marriage, the commission therefore recommends replacing it with "interdependence." This would allow the bachelor ranchers, for example, to file their taxes as a family unit. The definition of the sacrament of marriage could then be left to religious organizations where it most clearly belongs. Then a brother and sister would be treated equally by the state with their married cousins, but only a religious organization could determine whether two people could be married. Since much of the opposition to expanding the definition of marriage comes from religious groups, their objections will be satisfied. They will be left to define marriage within religious life as they see fit, and the state can then recognize other kinds of interdependent relationships.
At a single, bold stroke, the concerns of both the advocates and the opponents of homosexual marriage would be met, and the adoption of Anne by the Cuthberts might again be allowed.
Barry Cooper is Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary and Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute.
David Bercuson is Professor of History, University of Calgary and Director of the Calgary Institute for Strategic and Military Studies.
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