Men Loving Men: Staying Warm in Canada


According to our Canadian Correspondent:


Tories plan December vote on same-sex marriage,
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 | 9:46 PM ET
CBC News
The Conservatives will follow through with their election promise to revisit same-sex marriage, with debate expected to begin as early as next week.

The government confirmed Tuesday they will begin debate Dec. 6th with a vote planned before the House breaks for the holidays.

The motion is expected to ask MPs to reopen discussion on same-sex marriage, but will not directly challenge the existing legislation. However, it may ask whether parliamentarians wish to repeal or amend the existing law.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said if the House votes against changing the law to allow same-sex marriages, the matter would be settled.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Canada last year when Parliament passed Bill C-38 in response to a series of court rulings that gay people had the right to marry.

During the election campaign, Harper promised to hold a free vote in the House of Commons on whether Parliament should revisit the issue. Following the election, Harper said the vote would be held this fall.

Earlier this month, a group advocating the right to same-sex marriage demanded Harper hold a fall vote on the issue, accusing him of delaying just to appease his political support base.

Laurie Arron, national co-ordinator of Canadians for Equal Marriage, said his group projects that Harper's motion to reopen the debate would lose by a 30- to 40-vote margin.
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I think that might be optimistic, although the greater the difference the better, but it will in all likelihood fail since the Bloc, NDP, most Liberals and a few Conservatives will vote against it. It's not a confidence motion so the government won't fall in a minority Parliament. It's an issue that the majority of Canadians feel is over and done with - over 10,000 same sex marriages are estimated to have taken place already and the country still barrels on no worse for them. There is a split between urban/rural and Ontario/Quebec and the rest of the country, but you can't generalise this solely in that way.

Some pundits believe that Harper has received advice, and concurs with it, that opening the question in this way means he can appear to be following up on an election promise without the danger of further alienating both his socially-conservative base and the more liberal urban areas of Ontario and Quebec where he must make further inroads if he hopes to win a majority in the next election. Right now, he is running neck-and-neck with the Liberals and they don't even have a leader at the moment.

All of this, of course, doesn't mean that some future government can't try again; however, it becomes more unlikely if a free vote says leave it alone. Even a future success in changing it would probably lose at a Supreme Court challenge.

Pookie has spoken.

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