News
2007-09-13
Canada tracks gay
couples
Canadian gay men
and lesbians are coupling up, or at least standing up to
be counted, at five times the rate of their straight
counterparts,
Canadian gay men
and lesbians are coupling up, or at least standing up to
be counted, at five times the rate of their straight
counterparts, according to a 2006 census that tracked
same-sex marriages there for the first time.
The number of
same-sex couples, both married and unmarried, surged 32.6%
between 2001 and 2006, five times the pace of opposite-sex
couples, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday.
Canada's 2006
census counted same-sex married couples in line with the
national legalization of same-sex marriage on July 20, 2005.
In total, the
census enumerated 45,345 same-sex couples—0.6% of all
couples in Canada—of whom 7,465, or 16.5%, were
married couples, the agency said.
That's similar to
Australia and New Zealand but less than the United
States, whose roughly 594,000 same-sex-partner households
form about 1% of the total, according to the 2000 U.S.
Census.
Half of all
Canadian same-sex couples lived in the three largest metro
areas, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Nearly 54% of the
couples were male. But same-sex couples with children
were eight times more likely to be female, the census
found. About 9% of people in same-sex pairings had
children 24 years or younger living with them.
The official
figures are considerably lower than those researched by the
now-defunct rights group Canadians for Equal Marriage, the
Canadian Press reported. That advocacy group reported
in November that 12,438 marriage licenses had been
granted to same-sex couples since courts in some
provinces began recognizing such unions in 2003.
That's partly
because another advocacy group, Egale Canada, objected to
the differentiation and advised gay and lesbian spouses to
simply tick off the census box marked "husband and
wife."
"One box for
everybody," executive director Helen Kennedy told the
Canadian Press. "People are people and people just want the
same things out of life. Your sexual orientation
should not matter."
Anne Milan, a
senior analyst at Statistics Canada, said it's
"difficult to say" what effect Egale's dissent had on the
numbers.
"It's really a
debate that hopefully has run its course. We're just
part of the boring middle class now," Michael Leshner, a
lawyer and one of Canada's first legally married gay
men, told the news service.
On July 20, 2005,
Canada became the fourth country to legalize same-sex
marriage, behind the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. South
Africa has since followed suit, and Israel recognizes
same-sex marriages officiated in other countries.
(Barbara Wilcox, The Advocate)
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