Canada’s Supreme Court today issued a non-binding ruling stating that “it can legalise gay marriage without violating the constitution.” In October, Canada’s high court held hearings to gather various opinions before making today’s ruling. But the court seemed to defer to Canada’s parliament and government for a definitive decision on gay marriage. According to the BBC,

The judges said that the federal government's proposed definition of marriage as "the lawful union of two persons" would not violate the constitution.

However, they stopped short of saying that the Canadian constitution actually required the government to allow gay marriage across the country.

The authorities in Ottawa had hoped that the court would go further, as this would have made it easier to pass legislation.

The court also said religious officials could not be forced to officiate at homosexual marriages against their beliefs.

Gay marriage is already legal in six of the 10 Canadian provinces and one of its three northern territories, but it remains illegal in the rest of the country.

Does this remind you of something that happened last year, e.g., the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage? What a hoo-hah that touched off in the U.S. Just last month, 11 states approved constitutional amendments defining marriage solely as a union between a man and a woman.

Here we have it: the battle between the “checks and balances” or, to put it another way, federalism vs. states’ rights.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why anyone would want to stop our gay brothers and sisters from getting married. My own state overwhelmingly passed a ban on gay marriage. I was in the minority voting against the ban. I’m still trying to figure out what motivated the majority to vote in favor of the ban.

My quandary is this: Did people really vote to ban gay marriage, or was it just a symptom of a reaction by Americans to what they see as a disintegrating society – e.g., Hollywood’s sex and violence, crime, our disastrous public schools system, etc? Are people really targeting gays? Are people simply fed up with court rulings becoming law instead of coming through the legislative process? Or is it more of a reaction to the way the gay lobby has acted, and thereby tainted itself as an extreme on the political spectrum?

I hope the majority of Americans are not anti-gay. And I wish I had answers to the questions I’ve posed above.