By Laura Cummings
Even with the same-sex marriage question answered this summer by a close vote in Canada’s Parliament, debate on both sides still rages.
It’s this controversial topic that Katherine Arnup, an Associate Professor of Canadian Studies at Carleton University, is studying.
She’s qualified for the job, as well: Arnup has been investigating gay and lesbian relationships, and the history of the family, for over two decades.
“It’s really only since the mid-1990s that the laws have begun to change significantly regarding lesbian and gay rights, and only since then that sexual orientation was recognized as a grounds for non-discrimination under the Charter,” she said in a interview earlier this year.
Arnup has become a well-known expert on the issues surrounding same-sex marriage. Currently, she is conducting a comparative study of same-sex marriage in Canada and the United States. Arnup is looking at how changing laws are impacting gay couples and their children.
One issue in the same-sex marriage debate that Arnup has explored is the challenge to the traditional – though constantly evolving — idea of family.
“The way I see it, is that it’s just one more change in the way people organize themselves in society and in their relationships,” she said. “It’s an example of the way in which society has evolved, and the issue tells us a lot about questions of tolerance and diversity.”
Something else Arnup brings to the table is her background. Though formally trained as a historian, she is using an interdisciplinary approach that blends her credentials in Canadian history along with aspects of law, sociology and psychology.
“It’s a question of the many angles and tools that you use to look at a problem or an issue,” she said. “Interdisciplinary research is broad in that sense, but you can look at something quite specific.”