Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments. I have always enjoyed listening to his speeches in the House. I appreciate that he has a more enlightened view than other members of his party on a variety of issues.
I was interested to hear the speech of the hon. member for Rosedale, particularly a quotation from the learned Judge Goldstone, the leading prosecutor of the war crimes in Bosnia. He talked about Bosnia and what had happened there in terms of the terrible killings and atrocities and how that came to be possible. He said dehumanizing people loosens the moral constraints and allows people to demonize and dehumanise them and ultimately leads to genocide.
I believe that is related to this issue. What we are talking about in having a list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the human rights act is who we can treat as less than human. History is replete with cases of society's treating certain individuals as less than human beings. The human rights act is where we say because someone fits in this particular category we cannot treat them as less than human.
For example, there have been times in the past when people who were black or of other races were treated as less than human. Society said it was all right to do that. Even the courts said it was all right to do that. We are saying to the courts, by saying we cannot discriminate on the ground of race, that is not right any more, we cannot do that.
There was a time when Jews were treated as less than human. People of other religions were treated as less than human. We are saying that is not permissible.
There were times when children were treated as less than children. Society said it was all right. The courts said it was all right. However, the Canadian Human Rights Act states we cannot discriminate on the basis of age, ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex and so on, because these are people who have at times in the past been treated as less than human.
It used to be that children who were born out of wedlock were the outcasts of society and were treated as less than human. However, they cannot be treated that way today because the question of family status is listed here.
If there are any outcasts in this day and age, gays and lesbians are treated by much of society as the outcasts of this time.
When I think of Christian principles and the life of Christ, who showed more concern for outcasts than he did? From my point at least, my Christian values require me to support this bill. It is not okay to treat these people because of their sexual orientation as less than human.