TORONTO – U.S. syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage has reacted angrily to a new legal stance in Canada that could invalidate his 2005 same-sex marriage in Vancouver.
“Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go wake up my husband and tell him we got divorced last night,” Seattle-based Savage, who married Terry Miller after Canada’s legalized same-couple marriages, wrote on his blog post Thursday morning.
In a column entitled “Canada’s Conservative Government Turns My Husband Back Into My Boyfriend,” Savage said Ottawa’s hard-line position had cast doubt on the rights and legal status of couples who married in Canada after courts north of the border gave the go-ahead for same-sex weddings.
A Department of Justice lawyer in Ottawa re-opened Canada’s same-sex marriage debate when he argued in a federal court that an American lesbian couple who were married in Canada could not apply for a divorce.
The federal lawyer said their marriage was not legally valid in Canada because it was not recognized by courts in Florida, where they live.
Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, seemingly caught off guard by the federal court action on Thursday, told reporters in Halifax, Nova Scotia that his government will clarify Canada’s legal code on same-couple marriages, and did not intend to revisit the issue.
