Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to participate in the debate tonight.
I think it is fair to say that pretty well everyone here is suffering from debate fatigue. I have been in Parliament since 1997 and this issue has been bubbling up in one form or another since then. It appeared in resolutions. It appeared on pension rights. I was part of the justice committee that travelled across the country and got our report usurped by the decision made by the Court of Appeal. Then, of course, it culminated in Bill C-38.
This issue does keep coming up over and over again. The votes have been, to varying degrees, whipped votes. That in some respects has skewed the results, leaving those who see marriage as I do, as being between a man and a woman, somewhat dissatisfied. Had the votes not been whipped, I would suggest that possibly the results might have been different.
The other reason that this debate comes up over and over again is a resentment on the part of a lot of citizens, including my constituents, in that they do not like the courts taking unilateral decisions and in effect usurping parliamentary authority on a rights-based analysis in what is ultimately a very complex societal issue.
I respectfully submit that this is not the way in which to get societal consensus. Since over the last 10 years we have been trying to get societal consensus on this--and possibly there is some movement--I respectfully suggest that whipping votes and having courts inappropriately usurp parliamentary authority is not the way to get societal consensus.
I note that other countries, those that have adopted same sex marriage, in fact have moved legislatively. They have not had to respond to particular court decisions, so it has been the initiative of the legislatures rather than the courts. I suggest that a fear of what the people might say or think is always a bad thing in a democracy.
I want to turn to the motion itself. I would describe this motion as a bit of a false hope motion. The Prime Minister made an election promise, or more accurately a half-promise, during the last election and got himself into a bit of a jam. He was repeatedly asked whether he would use the notwithstanding clause. An honest response would have been, of course, to say that he would, because in order to effect any real change, to effect an override on Bill C-38, we are going to have to use the notwithstanding clause. If there is anyone who has a legal opinion to the contrary, I would be interested in hearing it.
Unless there is in the motion itself a commitment on the part of the Prime Minister to use the notwithstanding clause, I would respectfully suggest that this is a debate that really is largely a rhetorical debate, with much sound and fury signifying not too much at all.
Simultaneously we have heard from a lot of people who are wrapping themselves in the charter. Generally they are the people who oppose the motion. My only comment to those who oppose the motion while wrapping themselves in the charter is that part of the charter is the notwithstanding clause. The framers of the Constitution, the framers of the charter, felt that there was a necessary override at times. That is the only way and the only basis on which those framers would allow a charter to come forward.
Essentially we have a debate between those who conveniently ignore the notwithstanding clause and a Prime Minister who will not say whether he will use it.
I would like to frame my views somewhat differently, though. As we know, a lot of politicians get criticized for being less than forthright, for constantly bobbing and weaving and taking somewhat different positions, and I can see why that is, because to take a clear and unequivocal position on an issue such as this is simply to be held up to public ridicule, in part, and no one likes to be ridiculed publicly.
So at the risk of painting a target on my head, here is what I believe. I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, period. I do not think I can make it any shorter or clearer than that. I may have to be taken out to re-education camp, but nevertheless I still believe that.
I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and it is the central institution in society by which society perpetuates itself. That is the core reason for marriage. It is the central bridging institution. It bridges between the genders and it bridges back into previous generations and it bridges into future generations. I take those as self-evident truths. That is the core reason for marriage.
And that is why society effectively builds up a legal, a cultural and even a religious net around the couple: because it has to. The laws and norms that are around the institution of marriage between a man and a woman exist to protect particularly the women and the children, who are products of that marriage or who enter into marriage, during their vulnerabilities and their dependency.
Effectively, the laws and the cultural norms, and even the religious norms, mean that a man cannot walk away from a marriage relationship without having the law and the culture impose this web of obligations and responsibilities on him. Similarly, we could say the same thing for a woman walking away from a marriage.
The core purpose of marriage is societal perpetuation, and if marriage did not exist, we would have to invent it. Every society that survives in fact creates a strong web of laws and obligations, and societies survive only if they do so. If marriage is just about a couple, then we simply would not need this net of cultural and legal obligations and norms.
I want to turn now to the exceptions, because I know that of course some marriages do not have children. They are childless. That still does not detract from the core purpose of marriage. It is simply an exception to the norm.
And of course common law relationships produce children, but I respectfully submit that common law relationships are statistically not as stable as marriage, for all its flaws, and they are more difficult particularly for women and produce inferior outcomes for children. There are notable exceptions, and I do not want my email to be busted overnight with people who say, “But my kid is perfectly fine and we had a great relationship in a common law relationship”. As a statistical truth, this is true.
As well, single people produce children, but as we know, parenting is a tough slog when two people are raising a child. When it is one person raising a child, it is tougher again by some exponential factor. Society reacts by stepping into the breach, albeit, how shall we say it, inadequately, and in some manner replacing either the missing mother or father.
So I go back to my central point that marriage, for all its faults and all its failures, is the best institution for crossing the gender barrier and for the continuity of society.
The proponents of same sex marriage have been successful, however, in limiting the debate to simply a rights analysis only. Their argument starts with a conclusion. The conclusion is that marriage is simply a relationship between two people.
Therefore, it follows, as we back up through the argument, that if it is merely that--and I do not believe that, as I hope I have demonstrated--if it is merely a relationship between two people, then it matters not what gender the people are. And therefore, we arrive at the conclusion that it is discriminatory to have a situation in which marriage is only between men and women and that it can be between any gender if we follow the logic of that analysis. I respectfully suggest that this is in fact dubious logic and it guts the core reason for marriage.
There will be consequences. We cannot renovate the institution with nothing happening or expecting that nothing will happen. I expect the first consequence will be that heterosexuals will accelerate their detachment from marriage. There is a trend that is already there. We see more and more couples living together. We see more and more couples living together and then getting married. In both cases, there is less stability in those relationships.
The second, and more troubling, consequence is that we will need to redefine parenthood and limit children's rights. We already see the same sex couples, who are inherently sterile, asking courts to declare that their child, conceived by whatever means, is in fact their child, regardless of the biological rights. As Margaret Somerville has said, “society to become complicit in intentionally depriving children of their rights with respect to their biological family”.
I will be supporting this deeply flawed motion in spite of its political implications. I wish the Prime Minister had been more honest with Canadians and spelled out the legal and constitutional implications. This is a mischievous, duplicitous and dishonest motion, but regretfully I will have to support because it is in fact a proxy for the marriage debate.
I hope I made myself clear as to what I believe and why I believe it.