Madam Speaker, anyone who has had the experience of getting to know a gay or lesbian couple or gay or lesbian family would know the obvious answer to that question.
The values that are expressed in our relationships are no different than the values expressed in the relationships of heterosexual couples. The values that our children learn in our families are no different than the values that the children learn in the families headed by heterosexual couples. Anyone who has had any experience of that will understand that is true.
The question in some ways is unfortunate because it denies the reality of the commitments that we make to each other, of the love that we express, and of the care we have for our children and their upbringing.
I was raised in a family with heterosexual parents and I learned values from my parents and from their parents, my grandparents. Those are the values that I take forward into my life as an adult. Those are the values that I take into my relationship with my partner. I think it is very consistent. The couples who are bringing forward the question of marriage are people who strongly share the values of marriage as they have been raised with it in this society.
This is not a challenge to the meaning of marriage, to the values of marriage, to the obligations of marriage, or to the responsibilities of marriage. In this society where, in many ways, marriage is under threat from marriage breakdown and that kind of thing and not because it is gay and lesbian people whose marriages are breaking down. These are people who are willing to champion that institution and say that it is an institution that still has value, promise and possibility. They are the ones who are taking it into the future and who are strengthening marriage as we speak today.