Mr. Speaker, I rise here today to speak out against this motion. A significant number of Canadians have enjoyed the right to same sex marriage. However, if a bill were to result from this motion, the legality of their marriage would be based on whether it occurred before or after the arrival of the Conservative government. This would create a serious inequality between two equivalent categories of Canadians. If a bill were to follow, an additional inequality would arise between heterosexual couples and same sex couples, namely, the right to describe themselves as married.
I went into politics to reduce the number of inequalities between Canadians, not to increase them. For this reason, I will vote against this motion.
I do want to address some of the issues raised by my right hon. colleague across the way and not preach to the converted. He has urged us to address each other in a civil manner and I certainly want to do that.
Let me address some of the arguments made by those who are in favour of the motion.
There has always been this contention: why can gay couples not be satisfied with equality of rights under civil unions? Just leave us, us heterosexuals, the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, people say, and we will allow them the civil equality of civil unions.
The point very simply is that equality of civil unions and equality in civil unions withholds the right to call oneself “married”, and that right to call oneself a married person is of intense importance in terms of respect.
Respect seems to me to be what is fundamental here.
We care about equality of marriage rights because we care about equality of respect and because we believe we want to confer equality of respect on all our fellow citizens, some of whom are our neighbours, our friends and our colleagues. I cannot see how we confer equality of respect to our fellow citizens unless we accord them full equality of marriage rights.
I think the second question that then follows, and it follows directly from the comments made by my right hon. colleague, is that if we are according respect to one side of the debate, should we not accord equal respect to the other side of the debate, to those who believe that the definition of marriage should be restricted to a man and a woman?
I believe emphatically that equality of respect is called for here. I believe that this side of the House and those of us who support full equality rights to marriage for persons of the same sex do not want to withhold respect from the other side of the debate in any shape or form. Moreover, that respect, the basic respect to people we disagree with, is mandated by rights, freedom of expression and freedom of religion, rights which I value I think as much as any other member of the House and certainly I value in exactly the same way that those who disagree with me value them.
But then the question becomes, if both sides of this proposition must be treated with equality and have equality of respect and equality rights, then the difficult question, the core question, is, which rights must prevail? That is the question to which my side of the argument or this side of the argument must give a clear answer.
The proposition we would make is that those demanding equality of marriage rights should prevail because the loss of their claim is a real loss: they cannot call their union a marriage in law. Whereas those who oppose that definition lose nothing: their right to oppose remains intact and their right, the religious right, to withhold the solemnization of marriage is protected.
That is, those religious groups who do not want to solemnize marriages between people of the same sex retain the right to withhold that solemnization. Their rights are respected. The people who lose in a situation in which we withhold full equality of marriage rights to our fellow citizens are gay couples who deeply value the respect that that accords them as Canadian citizens.
My sense of this issue is that we are talking in fact about how to manage disagreement in our society. I think that is a common theme in this discussion. I feel that we have to manage respect by respecting the rights of those who disagree, but we cannot take action which withholds the practising of respect from any groups of citizens in our country. I feel that the attempt to restrict marriage to a man and a woman withholds a fundamental form of human respect and a fundamental human right from a category of our citizens. For that reason, I will vote against it.
I also disagree profoundly with the intentions behind this motion, because instead of uniting Canadians on what I believe is now a settled question for most Canadians, this motion will set one group of Canadians against another. I feel in that sense that it is playing politics. We play politics in this House every day of the week and politics is a very respectable profession, but there is a way of playing politics, and there I am going as far as I can.
We are politicians and we play politics, but there are some things, I would conclude, that should go beyond politics. Among them is the right of all Canadians to full equality, both in rights and in respect. That should, in my judgment, go beyond politics.
I am committed to that proposition above all, I think, that we are in politics to accord full respect to all Canadians regardless of sexual orientation, and that to deny that puts us in a situation where we begin to play politics with rights in a manner that we will come to regret, simply because it brings the process and processes of politics which we practise in this House into disrespect.
Therefore, on those grounds, I will vote against the motion.