For Better or Worse– at Last: Same-Sex Marriage in Canada

Gabrielle Richard, Université du Québec à Montréal
Amélie A. Gagnon, Université de Montréal

On July 20th 2005, Canada became the 3rd country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. Considering that the first Canadian census to take into account this new fact occurred less than a year later (in may 2006), one could metaphorically ask: who rushed to the altar? The 2006 Canadian census enumerated 45.345 same-sex couples– of which 16.5% were legally married. The objective of this article is to stress the picture of those couples who got married the first year it was legal to do so, and to compare them with their non-married counterparts as well as to opposite-sex couples. For the first time in history, Canadian same-sex couples have to choice to tie the knot… or not. Who are the early adopters? Are they long-time activists who gained their cause? Are they young people with traditional views on romantic life? Those are the questions we aim to answer.