Let’s hear it for Adam and Steve! And Edie and Eve.

There’s been another victory in the long drawn-out battle to recognize gay marriage in Canada. This week, British Columbia became the third province, joining Ontario and Quebec, to say enough is enough and let’s get on it. The B.C. Appeal Court overturned a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that said marriage should be restricted to heterosexuals.

On one hand, I don’t know why anyone would want to get married and face pre-nuptial agreements, fights over furniture and divorce. My distrust of the matter may only be a thin veneer masking my bitterness at never being a bride, lesbian or otherwise.

I may avoid marriage, or pretend to, but that’s my choice, or it should be. Everyone else needs to have that choice.

Marriage is a wide umbrella. For some, it offers security for themselves and their children. Resisting the tide of approval for gay marriage is tiresome, futile and costly to us all. Gay people are going to marry, and we are going to do it in your lifetime and in your town.

Some people howl about gay marriage shrinking the fabric of society. They would be better off spending some quiet time moving towards an understanding of what it is about this they are afraid of. Why do they want to deny some families the same services and security they seem to so ardently support for Ward and June Canuck?

The federal government sticks its nose in again and again. They appeal decisions, such as the one in B.C., because the law that gets ruled unconstitutional in the provincial courts is the federal common-law definition of marriage. Every time that the federal government feels this obligation to lumber to its feet and appeal a pro-gay marriage decision, our tax dollars go to a metaphorical Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. The floodgates cannot forever hold back the evolution of change and fairness for gay and lesbian people.

Another tiresome group, and one that might more directly benefit from a sanctioning of gay marriage, is the many hangers-on still in the closet.

Gay marriage being a reality might give courage and conviction to those gay and lesbian people who still hide their orientation, presenting their relationships as something less than they really are.

You know, the two librarians who are “special friends,” saving their pennies by sharing an apartment (and vacationing in Provincetown) since 1963. Bert and Ernie. The two “widowers” running the village bookstore from the first floor of their house.

Indeed, there are still many people still in the closet, afraid they’ll lose jobs, housing or familial love. Some are gay teachers, paranoid they’ll lose their jobs or be branded as pedophiles.

The fate of Eric Smith (the Cape Sable school teacher who was diagnosed as HIV positive 1986, and in 1991 gave up the fight to keep his job) seems to be the most up-to-date information they possess.

Would that still happen in 2003? Doug Hadley, spokesperson for the Halifax Regional School Board, says, “Absolutely not. We have a policy called Race Relations, Cross Cultural Understanding and Human Rights. It lays out very clearly that employees cannot be discriminated against based on sexual orientation.”

The sooner gay and lesbian people walk down the aisle, the better it will be for all of us, straight and gay (and in between).