Last Thursday, June 10, was the one year anniversary of same-sex marriage in
Ontario. While it is important that we continue to lobby for the
legalization of same-sex marriage in parts of the world where it has not yet
been legalized, and while it is important that, when voting in the upcoming
election, we keep in mind the need to get it legalized federally, under the
name marriage, for once and for all, the time has come to stop calling
same-sex marriages "same-sex marriages" and start calling them "marriages".
This is the final step in full equality, to indicate through our use of
language, that a same-sex marriage is just as much of a marriage as an
opposite-sex marriage. It's the same line of thinking that has eliminated
"lady doctor" and "male nurse" from the language.

We should take our cue from the Toronto Star's treatment, several months
back, of the first same-sex marriage involving a member of the Canadian
military. Several other newspapers ran small blurbish articles indicating
that John Doe [I forget his real name], a cadet at RMC, has made history by
marrying Pierre Untel. The Star instead wrote a small article to accompany
a larger article about some concert. They showed a picture of the happy
couple with a caption something like "Newlyweds John Doe, a cadet at RMC,
and Pierre Untel, a whatever his job is, attended whatever this concert is
while on their honeymoon." It looked exactly like one of those "here's
pictures of random people being moderately interesting" pictures. Brilliant
treatment!