Mr. Speaker, I ask people to recognize that the name of this bill is simply to modernize the statutes in relation to benefits and so on. That is what we ask people to keep in mind. It is sort of a paranoid idea to think this is the slippery slope toward what could be considered to be some kind of a dangerous movement toward anything else. Do not give it more attributes than it has. It seeks to modernize the payment of benefits and obligations in relation to many acts where there is reference to that kind of shared thing.
As to whether the definition of marriage should be modernized as well, I believe it should. I believe the definition of marriage that we are currently using, as I said, is from 1880s British common law. Many things have had to be changed to reflect social morals and so on. I think it is wrong to even try to legislate morality. That has been made in argument before. If we read Oliver Wendell Holmes at that same period of time in the 1880s, he was saying, “You can't legislate morality. The state has no business trying to legislate morality”. We can legislate equality, as the hon. member for Vancouver East pointed out quite correctly, but we cannot legislate morality.
I would say the right wing extremist party in this country has things completely reversed. Stop trying to legislate morality and admit that it is necessary to legislate equality.