Madam Speaker, marriage has had a specific connotation. However some of my constituents do not realize that two ceremonies actually take place within our marriage ceremony. One is a religious ceremony, assuming one is having a religious marriage, and the other is a civil ceremony. When papers are signed in the church those papers usually are with respect to the civil side of the ceremony. Most of us have the mental approach to marriage as being simply one ceremony when in fact there are two.
The Constitution gave us the ability to deal with the definition of marriage but it was not a religious definition. It was a civil definition. Therefore we are restricted, short of a constitutional amendment, to deal with marriage as it is set out in our Constitution. We cannot broaden it without going through a constitutional amendment.
I respectfully suggest to the member that we are proceeding to deal with only the civil side of marriage. Although I know the connotation in many minds is that there is one process, there are in fact two separate processes going on at the same time.
With respect to his second question about discrimination, I am not referring to some form of genetic discrimination. Section 1 of the Constitution clearly states that rights can be limited where it is demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society. I submit that the reason the geneticist was brought in when we were making changes to the table of consanguinity and who could marry whom, was the health reasons. Looking back at some of the history involving royalty, it was demonstrated that when they intermarried it was unhealthy to have that inbred nature thrust upon society.
It is clear that there are solid scientific and genetic reasons why one would not simply disregard the relationships of one to another, why we have done investigations in the past, and why we have a table of consanguinity relating to who can marry whom.