Mr. Speaker, as always, I listened very carefully to the hon. member for Burnaby-Kingsway because I know that over the years he has had a very passionate interest in this subject and has worked very hard to promote his point of view.
I find it very interesting that if one is arguing in favour of the hon. member's point of view, it is quite all right to quote members of various churches. If one is arguing against the hon. member and one quotes anyone from a church, all of a sudden one is bigoted, one is homophobic.
My friend quoted directly from a letter from a Catholic priest. I ask my friend the following question based on the catechism of the Catholic church. My friend brought the subject up, not I.
The catechism of the Catholic church states: "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. Basing itself on sacred scripture which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine effective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. Homosexual persons are called to chastity".
This clearly does not accord with the hon. member's view.
Since this is fundamental tenet of a recognized religion in this country, does the member consider that statement to be homophobic, and if he does should people who believe this as a fundamental tenet of their religion be categorized as homophobic and should this type of religion be outlawed in Canada?