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Minority report - Eleanor Brown

Many ethnic and religious groups are rallying behind gays on same-sex marriage - but not the big Jewish organizations.

Kenneth Cheung first decided to speak out personally in favour of same-sex marriage after seeing thousands of “Chinese faces” on TV at anti-same-sex marriage demonstrations. “We have our fair share of homophobia,” he admits, “but to present us as if we are all homophobic – we must correct this image.”

Montreal-based Cheung is national chair of the Chinese Canadian National Council (www.ccnc.ca), one of a growing number of ethnic and religious minority organizations speaking out in favour of same-sex marriage rights.

It’s about time. Not so much for the Chinese Canadian National Council, which has supported progressive and gay issues for many years (and which has also welcomed many out people, such as Toronto activist and Church Street coffee shop owner Kristyn Wong-Tam, former BC Human Rights Commissioner Mary-Woo Sims and Gay Asians Toronto co-founder Dr. Alan Li) – but for several others.

Gay rights have often been – let me be polite – a low priority for ethnic and non-Christian religious organizations (and for most Christians, too, but that’s for another day). Gay men and lesbians of colour, faced with racism in the largely white queer scene, have often said they’ve also had little luck finding acceptance within their own racial communities.

This sudden surge in gay rights talk seems so odd. To my mind, same-sex marriage is more controversial than basic civil rights: it’s far easier to argue that, regardless of your opinion on gay sex, homos should still be allowed to rent shelter and hold down a job (after all, a faggot on welfare is largely subsidized by the straight taxpayer, and the bigots can’t possibly approve of that use of their money!).

Yet here we are in 2005, and the fight for same-sex marriage really is changing the public face of Canada. Ethnic groups are front and centre, and they’re countering Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper’s belief that cultural minorities hate gays.

“The [ruling] Liberals may blather about protecting cultural minorities,” Harper said in a lengthy speech in the House of Commons on February 16, “but the fact is that undermining the traditional definition of marriage is an assault on multiculturalism and the practices in those communities.”

Harper continued: “All religious faiths traditionally have upheld the belief that marriage is a child-centred union of a man and a woman, whether Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh or Muslim. All of these cultural communities, rooted in those faiths, will find their position in society marginalized.”

My quoting from Harper’s speech makes Anne Lowthian spitting mad – I can hear it in her voice. The executive director of the Ottawa-based World Sikh Organization (WSO, www.worldsikh.org) says the politician is “using” minorities for his own ends.

Harper’s office once sent out a note to a Sikh group wishing its members a happy holiday – only that holiday wasn’t Sikh at all. Says Lowthian: “The man can’t tell the difference between a Sikh and a Muslim. We feel very much on side with homosexuals in Canada. He knows as little about them as he does about us.”

Lowthian says the WSO first spoke out on gay weddings when a Sikh Indian bigwig expressed distaste for Canada’s gay marriage experiment during a recent foreign tour by the Canadian prime minister. Half the world’s estimated 23 million Sikhs live in the Indian province of Punjab, where gay rights are not popular. But Lowthian says those Sikhs also live in a country that doesn’t protect any minority rights – “so of course they would object to extending rights to others [when they have none themselves],” says Lowthian.

Sikhism’s top religious authority has prohibited gurdwaras (places of worship) from performing same-sex marriages. The WSO immediately sent out a notice explaining that the edict doesn’t prevent Sikhs from supporting gay civil marriages.

As for the religion’s take on homosexuality, Lowthian has an inclusive interpretation. She says Sikhism’s precepts read like the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “It has always been a sincere desire on the part of Sikhs to ensure that the Oneness of humanity is never forgotten... [Y]ou might even say that I wouldn’t be a good Sikh if I didn’t object to discrimination against my fellow man or woman.”

There have always been progressive individuals in all communities. Judy Hanazawa of the Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association’s Human Rights Committee signed a press release condemning Harper’s “regressive” opinions and calling same-sex marriage “today’s civil rights struggle.” She was joined by Queen’s University professor Audrey Kobayashi, a former director of the National Association of Japanese Canadians and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Japanese Canadian National Museum.

Progressive folk are certainly very visible in the mainstream right now, and also to the sometimes insular queer community. This is in part because their comments and support are picked up by big gay groups like Canadians for Equal Marriage and Egale Canada. It’s also because the mainstream media are broadcasting their comments across the country.

But it’s not just lone progressives anymore. The World Sikh Organization’s Canadian board of directors has 32 members and speaks for hundreds of thousands.

At a recent press conference, Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) president Rizwana Jafri said Muslim Canucks must “stand up in solidarity with Canada’s gays and lesbians despite the fact that many in our community believe our religion does not condone homosexuality. This legislation is not about religion; it is about fundamental and universal human rights that are a guarantee that all Canadians, irrespective of their religious or ethnic background, feel part of the same family.”

There’s obviously an element of looking after their own behinds. Backing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms means holding on to your own hard-won place in Canadian society as well.

But who cares? The MCC is itself an impressive creation. The reformist Toronto-based group (www.muslimcanadiancongress.org), founded in 2003, regularly takes positions that are diametrically opposed to those of the Canadian Islamic Congress, the country’s more high-profile and much more conservative Muslim group. The mission statement reads, in part, “The Muslim Canadian Congress is a grassroots organization that provides a voice to Muslims who are not represented by existing organizations; organizations that are either sectarian or ethnocentric, largely authoritarian, and influenced by a fear of modernity and an aversion to joy.” At the press conference, MCC president Jafri also called on Muslims to reject what she termed Conservative Party fear-mongering among racial minorities.

There’s clearly a desire to keep bitterness from poisoning the Canadian mosaic – even, perhaps, a hope of integrating ethnic gays into wary and conservative communities. Other groups which crabbed at Harper include the Canadian Buddhist Civil Liberties Association, the National Association of Japanese Canadians and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

But not every minority organization is speaking out. A spokesperson for the Assembly of First Nations never returned my call. The influential Canadian Jewish Congress – ferociously dedicated to raising awareness of anti-Semitism – has declined to speak on queer marriage. “This is a very personal issue for people in the Jewish community,” says spokesperson Wendy Lampert. “There’s no consensus within the community, and so we can’t really take a position.” Certainly, individual rabbis have spoken out on same-sex marriage, both for and against.

But unlike groups offering alternatives, such as the Muslim Canadian Congress, the Canadian Jewish Congress seeks to represent every Jew in the country (except for gay marriage advocates, apparently).

B’nai Brith Canada bills itself as “the Jewish community’s foremost human rights organization,” and it, too, is sitting on the fence. Human rights coordinator Anita Bromberg says her community must hash things out internally before a decision is made. “There are religious issues involved. This is something rabbis have to weigh in on. We aren’t taking a position.” (B’nai Brith has spoken out on other gay issues – it supported including sexual orientation in the hate crimes provisions of the Criminal Code, for example, with the proviso that religious speech must be protected.)

Trying to show that the Tories are a better political ally for minorities, Harper even managed a reference to Hitler during his anti-gay marriage speech: “Quite frankly the Liberal Party, which drapes itself in the Charter like it drapes itself in the flag, is in a poor position to boast about its human rights record. Let us not forget it was the Liberal Party that said none is too many when it came to Jews fleeing from Hitler.”

Many have spoken out about Harper’s targeted anti-gay marriage advertising in the ethnic media. National Anti-Racism Council of Canada (NARCC) co-ordinator Michael Kerr says: “Given the tenor of the debate and the attempts as reflected by Mr. Harper’s ad campaign to harness and perpetuate certain stereotypes, it was very important that NARCC take a position.” That position turned into a full-fledged pro-gay wedding stance, as suggested by a delegate from the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic.

Kerr says there was no dissent. The group “looks at issues from an inclusion perspective, in synch with other areas of oppression. It was a no-brainer.” NARCC’s members include Toronto’s African Canadian Legal Clinic, the Canadian Arab Federation and the Canadian Council of Muslim Communities. (Its website, www.narcc.ca, will be online soon.)

Kerr admits that NARCC has some high-profile gay men and lesbians involved in its workings – like volunteer Mary-Woo Sims, who’s also a co-chair of Canadians for Equal Marriage. “But that’s not where the initiative came from,” says Kerr. “It came from a desire to own our principles.”

So many groups of people, finally coming together for queer rights, when there are still many other priorities.

The World Sikh Organization is preparing for a Supreme Court of Canada hearing to support a Sikh teen who wants to go to public school in Quebec wearing the articles which mark his faith (including the kirpan, a ceremonial knife). The Muslim Canadian Congress wants an end to Ontario’s experiment with sharia (Islamic law), which brings religion into the family law system. The Chinese Canadian National Council is seeking individual redress for the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act, legislation that forced Chinese immigrants to pay extra for the privilege of coming to Canada.

They’ve all spoken out for same-sex marriage. Will we remember, and return the favour?

• Eleanor Brown is a Montreal-based writer. Her blog is at www.OpinionatedLesbian.com