Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a few minutes to thank the hon. member for what I think is one of the finest speeches I have heard in this House on this issue. In particular, what struck me about the member's speech was the fact that he was speaking without the rhetoric and without the attacks that we have heard on this issue.
I also represent a rural riding. When an issue such as this comes up in a rural riding it is definitely contentious, but what I find people are more uncomfortable with than the issue of civil marriage is this false Manichaean divide that exists between the so-called enlightened and the so-called dark forces and the kind of bile and attacks that have been laid out in this campaign time after time. That is what people in my constituency are growing more and more uncomfortable with.
Like the hon. member, I have received hundreds of letters attacking and ridiculing people of faith who believe that civil marriage should go forward. They have attacked us because we are considered not religiously proper enough, which I find is a falsehood.
I could live with that because people are sincere and concerned and feel strongly about this, but what I have a hard time accepting is the sight of politicians standing up and treating themselves as paragons of moral virtue, lording it over us on how the family should be. Most families I know have a hard enough time getting by. In most families, people have agreed to marry their loved ones and have done it with the best of intentions. Some are undermined over the years and their marriages break up. Do we condemn those people? No, we do not. Do we say that their children are failures? No, we do not. Or do we say that if those families cannot have children they are failures? No, we do not.
Fundamentally, marriage is two people trying to build a relationship in the long term. This is what it fundamentally is. When I see politicians standing up and offering their example as something that we have to look up to morally, I find that very surprising, because at the end of the day I do not think this is a matter of one party having truth or not.
On this issue, I feel that as members of Parliament we came here all of us in good conscience, all of us having to come together, all of us having to vote, and at the end of the day it does not make someone better or worse for having made the decision.
I would like to ask the hon. member if he feels that at the end of the day the best we can do as parliamentarians is to vote according to how we think is best for moving this society forward.