One of the most tiring things about this election are the various extended discussions of the issue of gay marriage. Though, of course, I'm a noted opponent of the practice - I also believe that, in Canada, it's already an unchangeable fact. Once the legal validity of those initial gay marriages was allowed, the permanent transformation of the institution was enshrined as a fact in reality - as opposed to only in the minds of certain judges and activists. The solution presented by Mr. Harper in this election - to hold a free vote on this matter without invoking the Notwithstanding Clause - is entirely untenable. For that matter, under the present conditions, I doubt if such a vote would even pass the House of Commons (leaving aside the question of the Senate) even under a Tory Government.

So, thus, we've left with coverage being sucked up by what is, in reality, a matter of settled law and, in truth, a non-issue. Gay Marriage isn't going to be repealed. If it was, the Supreme Court would strike it down. If a Tory Government then attempted a resort to the Notwithstanding Clause using af free vote, I expect there would be less than sixty votes in favor. It's a dead parrot of an issue.

I say this because I was reading this on a Quebec Young Liberal blog. Basically, the author attempts to dodge the question, more or less through the bizzare formulation that the Executive has an obligation to uphold rights that is absent in the legislative branch.
That is an absurd twisting of the facts, even for a Liberal. The point is simple - if Paul Martin really believed that Gay Marriage was a "fundamental human right" then he would have whipped his caucus to vote in favor of it and refused to sign the nomination papers of any candidate opposed to it. The fact that he goes out and claims that gay marriage is a matter of "human rights" and that anyone opposed to it is therefore opposed to "human rights" while sitting alongside more than forty Liberal MP's who voted against it suggests a fundamental lack of seriousness about the issue.

Gay Marriage isn't a "right." It's a public policy preference disguised as a "right" in order to silence opposition to it. Gay Marriage is no more a "right" than normal marriage is a "right." It's simply a matter of prudent public policy - that the state realizes that there are benefits to society as a whole as a result of supporting the (typically but not exclusively) procreative union of a man and a woman. Marriage benefits, so far as the state is concerned, aren't some kind of "love bonus".