Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his questions but I only wish he had been part of the justice committee that I sat on, because most of those red herrings were put there. With all due respect, they are red herrings and I will attempt to address them now.
First of all, I did not indicate that the sole criterion for true marriage was procreation. He will want to read my speech to verify the accuracy of what I said.
I quoted Judge Gonthier and I will quote him again for the member:
The fundamental nature of marriage inheres in, among other things, its central role in human procreation....
It is one of the central roles of a true marriage. It is not the only role or only criterion. The member misunderstood what I said there.
As for the argument that because some heterosexual couples cannot procreate or choose not to procreate, to bring that into this is simply a red herring. That does not invalidate those marriages. The reality is that a heterosexual couple is still a procreative unit by the very nature of the act of sexual intercourse, whether or not they themselves can or choose to procreate.
However, the important difference is this: never will a homosexual relationship or a homosexual so-called marriage ever result in procreation without the intervention of a third party. That is the major distinction between the two types of relationships.
The member mentions that I am a practising Catholic and that is true, but the point is that this is not a Catholic issue. The largest number of my constituents who have consistently spoken to me on this issue are Muslims.
Yes, the Catholic church and Catholic leaders and practising Catholic lay people are concerned, but so are they of every major faith in the world and so are Canadians of no particular faith; they are very concerned about changing the definition of the most fundamental institution in this society, marriage and the family.
In my speech, and I will be glad to talk to the member about it later, I quoted expert after expert, some of them gay and lesbian people themselves, who speak directly to the negative consequences in the long term of such a reckless course of action as this government seems determined to pursue.