Mr. Speaker, I will pick up where I left off and assume that those in the House and those watching listened carefully to my earlier comments. I said earlier that I felt that this bill protects religious freedoms as enshrined under subsection 2(a) of the charter. I felt that very strongly. I also said in my previous comments that the debate needs to be respectful.
That moves me to the main reason why I am supporting this bill: the principle of equality. I think that there very much is an issue of equality and human rights with respect to this bill, which must be addressed.
I have had the opportunity to talk with many young people who are gay and lesbian, to listen to their experiences and to hear about the incredible difficulty of being a young person growing up gay or lesbian. I try to imagine being in their shoes, being in a situation where I could not look forward in my life to marrying the person I love, where I could not have my relationship recognized by the state, where I would be denied that. I would be denied that not because it would ruin someone else's marriage, but because people did not feel that I should have it.
This brings me to my aunt. My aunt is a lesbian. My aunt is someone who has fought very hard in this country against hate, with different hate crimes divisions and also in a lot of different work she has done as a journalist. She is someone I am deeply proud of and someone I care for very deeply. Why should she not have the right to marry the person she loves? Why should that right be denied her? How is my relationship with my wife and my three children hurt by my aunt having the opportunity to share her life with someone?
The reality is that it is not. In fact, I would submit that my relationship is strengthened by my aunt having the ability to marry the person she loves. Marriage is not hurt by monogamous committed relationships. Marriage is not destroyed by love. My family is made stronger by my aunt being able to share her life with the person she chooses to share with, the person she cares for.
People can say, “Well, she can have that”. They say that she can have that but we just cannot use the word “marriage”. She can have all of those other things we have, but she cannot have the word “marriage”.
It would be akin to me being elected to this House and not being allowed to use the term “member of Parliament”. All of my colleagues would have the term “member of Parliament”, but the term “federally elected representative” would be bestowed on me.
Words carry power in that they bestow upon those individuals legitimacy. Therein lies the heart of the effort to deny gays and lesbians the right to marry, to say that their relationship is not equal, that their relationship is not legitimate. It is not the role of the state to choose whose relationship is right and whose relationship is wrong, who has the right to love whom and who does not. Somebody is in a committed monogamous relationship.
We all need somebody to love. We all need somebody at the end of the day to go to and say, “I had a tough day. I need to talk. I need support tonight because I have had a difficult day”. We all need that person to turn to.
The question is, where does this lead? If we allow this, where does it lead?
It leads to equality.
Society is not static. Things do not simply remain the same in perpetuity. Let me give many examples in that regard. Slavery was a tradition across all the epoch of history. When it changed it did not lead to the disaster that some forecast. It was quite the opposite. It led to equality.
Let us deal with racism and the progression away from racism toward equality. Some said that the end of discrimination would lead to problems. It did not. It led to equality.
When we talk about sexism, which we are still fighting, along with racism, we see that its progression toward equality has only met strength and that those changes have been powerful.
Let us take a look at other words, words that have changed, traditional words. How about the word “person”? The word “person” has transformed. Can members think of a more fundamental thing than the definition of a person? It is almost impossible to imagine that within the context of the last century women were not considered people, that fellow citizens today who sit in this House who are women and who are minorities were not considered people. Those were traditions. They must change.
What of marriage? Is marriage this unchangeable union, this union that has never seen change? Absolutely not. In fact, the religious definition of marriage, the idea of marriage being a religious ceremony, did not come into being until the 16th century. It was in the 14th century that the clergy began to get involved in religious ceremonies performed by the state because the clergy was literate, so we undertook a change then.
At one point marriage was really an exchange of a woman into the ownership of a man, because a woman was not a person. She was transferred from ownership by the parent to the husband. So too have we changed our views on divorce and other matters as we have moved forward as a society and as we have made decisions.
However, when I look at this, the fundamental issue for me is that I have been given the privilege and honour of sharing my life with Aerlyn, the woman who I have spent 13 years with and who I love dearly. As I have been given the honour of sharing my life with her, so too should gays and lesbians be given the right to share their lives in a rich and meaningful way. The state must not say to them that it passes moral judgment, that their relationships are not legitimate. That is the worst type of discrimination. It is institutional discrimination. The state is passing moral judgment on the equality of a relationship. I will not stand for it and I am proud to support this legislation.
