Mr. Speaker, I have listened to a fair bit of the debate on this issue, especially at report stage last week and again this week. I feel there are some things I need to say which in a sense respond to comments that have come largely from the other side of the House.
This should not be necessary and this should not be relevant, but I feel I need to establish my credentials to speak on family matters. The fact is that I have been married to the same man for 37 years. I have borne and raised three children and spent a good part of that time as a full time, stay at home mother. I now have grandchildren. I now also have a somewhat older mother who needs a fair bit of family care. We are all a family.
According to some people in the Chamber, I am no longer a family because my husband and I can no longer have children. Therefore we should not be entitled to any benefits because we do not fit that old criterion of the family unit being there to raise children. We have been there and done that.
Families in Canada come in many different shapes and sizes these days. Families can be people looking after elderly parents. They can be brothers and sisters living together. They can be members of a family looking after other members of the family who are not able to care for themselves. Families are not necessarily mothers and fathers. One-third of marriages end in divorce, which is a pretty sad figure until we consider that the other two-thirds end in death.
The fact is that people establishing committed, loving relationships of long term duration is to the benefit of society at large. That is what the bill is about. The bill is about recognizing that not every family is the same.
We have a very clear law on marriage which has been recognized in common law for a century and a half. It is now also included in the preamble to this legislation, but also for nearly half a century we have recognized other kinds of relationships outside marriage.
We have recognized common law relationships for a long time now for the purposes of establishing the obligations and the benefits of those relationships. We have not considered them the same as marriage in the legal sense, but we have nonetheless recognized that these are generally committed, long term relationships that have many of the same qualities as a legal marriage.
What has bothered me in this debate is the way we have been speaking about fellow human beings. It has bothered me a great deal that we have talked about hundreds of thousands of our fellow Canadians as if they are somehow inferior human beings. I can put it no other way.
Homosexuality is a fact of life for many Canadians. It is not a choice of lifestyle. It is a fact of life. It seems to me that the comments I have heard on this topic have forgotten completely the people we are talking about are somebody's sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, cousins or next door neighbours. For most of our history these people have had to live in secret, hiding who they are and feeling a sense of shame about who they are because of the societal attitudes I have heard expressed in the Chamber. It is hardly an attitude of inclusiveness toward our fellow Canadians.
It is this attitude which leads young people who realize in their teens that they are not heterosexual to have a whole layer of difficulty added on to growing and developing into adults, not because of who they are and what they are but because of the attitudes of society.
None of us can expect to be whole human beings if we are hit every day, as our society does, with the kinds of messages I have been hearing in the House, the message that what we are is shameful, to be hidden and despised.
I will say it again. These people are somebody's sons, daughters, fathers and mothers. In my view if what we are doing with the legislation, as we did with common law marriage nearly a half century ago, is encouraging and recognizing long term committed relationships I believe that is to the benefit of all society. I do not see how anyone could argue that this takes away from the institution of marriage. I do not see how anyone could argue that this weakens the moral fibre of society.
I must say I have been somewhat mystified by the total preoccupation with sex on the other side of the House. The bill says nothing about sex. It talks about committed, long term relationships. I am married. Whether or not I am married in law has absolutely nothing to do with whether my husband and I have sex, nor whether two people having sex has anything to do with their being recognized as a legitimate, long term relationship for the purposes of the bill.
I heard talk about the importance of having both parents as if somehow recognizing same sex relationships for the purposes of benefits and obligations would ensure that every child has two parents. As I said earlier, one-third of all marriages ends in divorce. The fact is that we as a society have to deal with that. We have to deal with the fact that communities and society are responsible for children as much as the two parents who happen to have borne them.
Today I only want to say that to the extent people live with dignity, they live full and complete lives and our whole society benefits. What we have done until now is to relegate same sex relationships to the back alleys of society and in many cases the back alleys of our cities. That is not healthy for the people involved and it is not healthy for Canadian society.
I recognize that the bill offends the sense or morality of some people but it does not deal with sin. It does not deal with our sense of morality. It deals with legal benefits and legal obligations. I am quite entitled to feel how I want about what activities I think people might be engaged in, in their homes. They are quite entitled to feel however they want about mine. The legislation has nothing to do with that. It makes no moral judgments. It simply says how people are to be treated in society and what obligations they have to each other.
I belong to a religious tradition that has in its background something called the Inquisition where for a long time people thought they could coerce others into sharing their beliefs. It was a period of some shame and for which the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church has recently apologized.
I will not sit here in the Chamber and make decisions as if everybody in Canadian society has to share my beliefs and conform to my particular moral standards. I do not think any of us has the right to do that. It harms society when we do that and it ultimately harms ourselves when we judge some people in our community and society to be less worthy and inferior.