CANADA: Weddings lined up for Canada Day at the end of the month between thousands of same-sex couples are not being met with uniform acceptance, writes Doug Struck in Toronto.
It promises to be a grand June wedding. Two scarlet-coated officers of the famed Royal Canadian Mounted Police standing before a justice of the peace with an escort of similarly scrubbed up Mounties observing the nuptials on the eve of Canada Day, a national holiday.
When the two constables become the first male Mounties to marry each other, the grumpiest witness-from-afar might well be prime minister Stephen Harper. The planned union of Jason Tree and David Connors in Nova Scotia on June 30th has cast a spotlight on Harper's pledge to his conservative backers to try to roll back same-sex marriage laws.
Harper has not spoken publicly about the upcoming wedding and has ordered his party members to shut up about the matter, a move that has served to draw more attention to the issue while sparking complaints about the prime minister's heavy-handedness.
"I think it's great if we change the public perception," said Tree (27), who patrols a stretch of rural fishing communities along the Bay of Fundy. "If the public sees the RCMP as representing the diversity of the community, that is good."
About 25 miles away, Connors (28) helps to police Yarmouth, a town of 8,000. The two men met in college eight years ago and have been partners since. Tree said he had been open about their relationship since he joined the force six years ago and "from the outset, I have never had a single problem".
The force has assigned the two men close together, as it does with other couples, and fellow officers "have all been great", Tree said from their home in Meteghan, Nova Scotia.
Tree and Connors decided to join thousands of other same-sex couples getting married in Canada. In 2003, Ontario's highest court ruled that same-sex couples could not be denied marriage. Courts in other provinces followed. Last July, Canada's parliament bowed to the judicial momentum and narrowly approved same-sex marriages throughout the country.
However in February, the Liberal-led government was replaced by Harper's Conservative Party, whose platform included a pledge to ask parliament to reopen the issue. Harper has been in no hurry though; he said on Friday that he would introduce the resolution some time in the autumn.
The marriage of Tree and Connors has clashed head-on with the foremost icon of Canada's national image of virile, outdoorsy strength - the square-jawed Mountie of popular lore.
The image of the 22,561-member RCMP has already evolved. Women joined in 1974; they now make up 17 per cent of the force. In 1990, Sikh Mounties were permitted to trade the flat-brimmed Mountie hat for their traditional turban - but Tree and Connors's uniformed matrimony goes too far for some.
"This does nothing to strengthen the family," said Dave Bylsma, president of the Ontario council of the Christian Heritage Party. "Personally, it doesn't matter to me if they are RCMP or dog-catchers or garbage- men, but they are obviously using the fact that they are Mounties to rub our nose in it."