Gay-rights, skin colour, an ice-cream bar on the quad. Canadiana writ large.
June 20, 2006
I went to Toronto this week-end to watch my little brother get his Bachelors in Computer Science. Little did I know that upon arriving at the Ryerson theatre at 8:00am in the fucking morning, that I would be embroiled in some mega-controversy about same-sex marriage rights.
I've decided, for the record that in terms of protests, I much prefer being on the "shocked and outraged but ultimately surprised witness" end of things.
Here's what happened:
From the left - Honouring Somerville, dishonouring Ryerson
from the general middle - Ryerson Students Against Margaret Somerville
from the middle- right -How Ryerson failed Margaret Somerville
Here is a video from the CBC just to get a sense of the experience. (For those of you who know him, check out my brother turning his head.. it's in the first 11 seconds).
Basically Margaret Somerville is an Academic here at McGill who does medical ethics, but thought somewhow that it was within her purview; (because children born of same sex marriage often co me from donor parents) to oppose same sex marriage on the grounds that children have an enshrined right to know who their genetic parents are.
Since you gay daddy may not want you to know who mommy was, he shouldn't be marrying, much less having kids. I know - I call it a stretch - 'specially the rigamarole about a right to your genetic heritage. If that's really such a big deal, lets's focus on stopping war, displacement, and refugee camps for a far broader majority of the worlds population and worry less about the tiny percentage of kids born via new reproductive technologies.
Here's Somervilles argument about the same topic.
gay rights, Childers rights
I don't know, I don't hold the national research chair on ethics, but shit, don't I find her arguments specious in the extreme. Way to disguise homophobia as regard for childrens rights dude. Assuming Somerville has a point, and bio-originism is legislated, what does one do if their children, lovingly raised in a home with a bio-mom and a bio-dad turn out to be gay, and want children of their own, what do you say them?;
"Sorry sweetpea, your culture made a decsion for you, in your best interests years ago, that gay people couldn't have kids, because we think kids have a genetic right to know their birth parents. Aren't you proud of us, didn't we show foresight and tolerance?"
Not that I am saying kids shouldn't know who their birth parents are, just that - if we are going to start making limits, why limit peoples right to reproduce, or to form loving bonds in the hope of eventually reproducing together, in whatever form that takes? Why not limit the right to privacy around reproductive choices? Open up the decision-making from start to finish to the end-results (children) of that process, doesn't that make more sense?
Anyways, I am getting away from my topic which was the ceremony itself.
Continued from main page..
Dad and I arrived in the rain, to a scene of mild but civilised chaos with parents and tea-cups and mortarboard hats with tassles hanging limply in the haze. As we entered the theatre a group of rainbow wearing protesters arrived (late bien sure, who arrives before nine at a protest?). And I began to think something fun might occur. Inside the program was a one-pager kindly distributed by Ryerson PR explaining that the choice of honorary degree that day was controversial at best.
Insert one hour of wait time upon entry to theatre, an hour in which my beloved and irascible (And weird. Did I mention weird? Holy hell-pants, the man is like the combined twitches of every character from MASH and Cheers combined - but I do love him.) Anyroads dear old Dad has, of late, decided that a little "shoots from the hip" racism is not uncalled for, so as we sit surrounded by the diverse multitudes that make up the parents of Ryersons graduating classes in Computer Science, Applied Science and Engineering, Dad clears his throat and says: "I see a lot of brown names on this program."
I think to myself; "Excellent there are queers outside who want to smack us silly for entering this hall, and there are people of colour here who want to smack us silly for my dads inpossibly ignorant worldview. Welcome to Canada folks."
Of course all I said: was : You weren't born here either dude, so shut -it." Then I showed him solitaire on my i-pod and settled down to wait.
The ceremony itself was marked with protest, many of the faculty members wore pins, stickers, flags and other decorations in support of the protest, and when Somerville got up to speak, the faculty unfurled a banner that read; "My Ryerson supports Human-Rights". All the faculty wearing flags turned their backs to the ceremony mounting a human wall of rainbow colour during Somervilles award.
I am in support of the argument for free speech, so I am not going to say Somerville did or did not deserve her award, however;
Her opening gambit was a mild apologia to the scandal in the form of a treatise on the concept of moral regret. Moral regret is the feeling a person gets when they hold a position that many people disagree with, but out of principal the person cannot give up that position- The feeling of pain inherent in moral regret is engendered by the hurt feelings and the anger all around. Somerville said she was feeling moral regret for her stance on gay -marriage.
Now, in lay-persons terms I imagine one could also call "moral regret", Crocodile Tears and be describing basically the same experience.
So as I said to good old Pop, Shut it.
Once we had got through that bit of fun, there was a long wait for the V-names to hit the mic, puncutated by Dads intermittent grumbling about the ceremonys multi-culti crowd, and my sotto-voce invective.
My little brother made me proud as punch when he finally achieved the stage, and when we left the building we both had some ice-cream bars and tiny fruit tarts (The dessert, not the cutest of the protesters) and then headed for home in the sweltering heat of a summers day.
Congratulations Little Flink. You have made my heart proud.
As for the rest. This was a stellar example of the at times uncomfortable experience of being a Canadian, and whatever I may feel about Somerville, I am happy to have had the unexpected opportunity to examine some of my carefully held world views early on a monday morning.
Posted by Miriam at June 20, 2006 10:23 AM
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how strange! I was in Toronto this weekend too only the only interruption I had was on sunday when my cross-town travel was obstructed by the throng forming in front of Much Music to get Paris Hilton's autograph.
Oddly the Dutch dad was reading about Paris Hilton in his copy of 24hrs during the ceremony.
Like I said, the man has left decorum for dead on the side of the road.
Yep - abolishing gay marriage is CERTAINLY the way to make sure kids know who their birth parents are.
Now there's just that pesky matter of the foster care system, and adoption agencies, and Angelina Jolie . . . .
Angelina Jolie?
Y'all are totally bringing down the tone of this screed, you and Ned with his Paris Hilton name-dropping.
Can we just get back to the matter at hand: What kind of damage will future trends of dubious parentage have on the self-help industry?
If you don't know who your sperm-provider and ovum baker were, how can you blame them for fucking you up. I'll bet that's the central unsung pillar of lady M's thesis, which I just read again btw and am in 'high dander' about again.... (Because the first time wasn;t enough)
can you believe she writes this at the end;
"Knowing the identity of one's close biological relatives is central to forming our individual human identity, developing our capacity to relate to others, and the quest to find meaning in life."
Where is her proof? I realize as an ethicist she may not be bound by the same laws of empirical research as say, a real scientist. But c'mon "meaning in life". The last time I checked that was a pretty elusive quality.
I don't hate that she's homophobic, I hate that people will take such blatantly poor argumentation and support it because it ties in so well with their prejudices.
{ fumes }
oh lauren is making me go work I have to stop ranting now.
When I found out about the decision by one of my alma maters (by far my favorite one, it must be said, by virtue of its leftist, practical stance on most things), I was furious. But I am very happy to see the professors, who are the best thing about Ryerson, stick it to the (increasingly conservative) administration. The interview in the news clip with my cultural studies prof Colin Mooers is particularly good.
Having said that, your experience is probably the most fun anyone will ever have at convocation. I spent my undergrad convocation counting the number of times the chancellor said "changing tomorrow today."
I actually thought of you during the grad, they were presenting the diploma for culture and communications with the applied science programs - which struck me as odd: chemists, bridge builders, and an assortment of over-educated pop culture junkies writing papers on gay symbolism in american recruitment propaganda. I guess it makes sense.
An MA student in the C&C program was the only one who didn't shake Somervilles hand on purpose. He was totally a homo I could tell ;).
I wonder if Ryerson should start saying "Changing tomorrow to yesterday today". It has less punch but it sounds accurate for so many major institutions lately.
When they have done genetic tests on families in order to find out whether the child has a genetic condition, >20% of the time they discover what they call "mistaken paternity." That is, in more than 20% of the cases tested they discover (by accident, these are NOT paternity tests where there is already some question) that the person who thinks he is the father is not actually the father. I wonder what Somerville would have to say about this? Given that homosexuality has an estimated prevelance of about 10% (which is itself questionable), this figure of 20-30% would seem like a much more prevelant problem.
forcing me to the very obvious conclusion that in order to be a either a milkman or a postman, one ought to be homosexual.
As one of those over-educated pop culture junkies who will be convocating from the Communication program at SFU any moment now (or next October), some of the weirdness about graduating with engineers and computer scientists will be migitated by the hope that those of us with half a brain will use it to interface with those in technical fields, those of us with a quarter of a brain will work in marketing (which I may very well end up as well), and those of us with no brains whatsoever may consider an MBA with our lattes.
Or something like that.
Don't do an MBA...
I tried that route before I decided that I would go join the over-educated pop-culture junkies here in Montreal (my course-pack should arrive this week!)
I found doing a graduate diploma in business so incredibly intensely strange. I am not sayng they aren't valuable or anything. It's just the culture of business school is so different than the culture of arts and science.
Okay and yes, I dropped out, but that has more to do with the fact that I am basically innumerate than with any of the weird marketing power-points I had to memorize.
I hope my pending degree in coms can be as practically applied as my business diploma was supposed to be... I worry that I'll get too caught up the minuteae of "What does end user really mean?" rather than "What does one do to help the end-user?"