@AnonymousGirl – it sounds as if you’re reading quite a lot and have researched this topic thoroughly, but I must respectfully disagree with your statement: “This has been overblown”.
The Harper government is taking the legal and political position that they don’t recognize same sex marriages even if Canada legally performed them, if their resident state/country doesn’t.
As mentioned above, I have friends for whom this is actually quite a large impact. Their marital status is now unclear because they are one of the estimated 5,000 “foreign” marriages and their marriage may therefore be nullified by this (not yet clarified) policy change.
They were residents of Wisconsin who married, then emigrated to Canada. Wisconsin doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, so therefore under Harper’s policy shift, although they are now Canadian residents, their marriage may be nullified.
What is causing the media firestorm is that it is illogical to go backwards and declare marriages null from a legal standpoint. It would be better to discuss this as a Sovereignty issue and provide clear legal proceedings (irregardless of the gender of the married couples) for both foreign resident marriage and foreign resident divorce.
The question that this comes from is: Why would Canada require a same-sex divorce plaintiff and defendant to reside in Canada for one year before granting a divorce?
The answer SHOULD have been: We’ll just waive the one-year residency requirement for divorce proceedings of foreign residing married couples.
Instead, they played a very different card. They are opening the door to entirely nullifying the legal basis under which over 5,000 couples married. Past tense.
The going back and changing legal-status bit of this is what is troubling to folks – and should be! It sets a bad precedence.