Toews gets one week

Social Conservative MP Vic Toews gets one more week in committee for the the Civil Marriage Bill. Toews who was using every delay tactic possible, wrangled one more week of discussion before the committee.

Toews said in a press release earlier today...

"The Liberal plan - backed by the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois - to invoke closure on the committee hearings would have brought Bill C-38 back to the House of Commons by June 9th. Under the extended plan, that won't happen until June 16th, and an extra 20 witnesses will be heard by the committee. These witnesses include legal experts, civil marriage officials, religious organizations, and other interest groups who have unique perspectives on the issue of marriage."

Toews is being deceitful when he says Canadians have not been heard on the issue of same-sex or gay marriage. This is a matter that has been before the Canadian people for over three years. Ontario residents have had same sex marriage for over two years now.

Despite continued warnings that religious organizations would be forced to perform gay marriages against their will, not one case of this has occurred in Ontario or for that matter anywhere else in this country.

The Ontario government has already passed laws conveying all rights of married persons to married same-sex couples. BC has been doing this with respect to gay rights since 1992.

The Defend marriage coalition has been trying to defeat this bill from the beginning and upon seeing that the bill likely has enough support to pass, the coalition has turned to other tactics. They have supported voting non-confidence on the Liberal budget and Conservative efforts to bring the government down any way they can do it, this despite the majority of Canadians being opposed to an election now and supportive of same-sex marriage.

The coalition along with the very large and well-funded American Christian activist organization, Focus on the Family have been working hard to elect social conservatives as Conservative candidates. This move won't affect the current situation, though it could have an effect if Stephen Harper and his Conservatives ever form government. They want to ensure they have the people to repeal any law conveying marriage rights to same-sex couples.

Some of you will be saying once it is law no one will change it. That may be true on many things with respect to rights, its not true this time. As long as the Conservative Party is opposed to same-sex marriage, those supportive will need to ensure the party is never elected to government.

The new overt American style Christian activism within the Conservative party is coming on the heels of the movement's recent successes in the United States in repealing anti-discrimination laws that protected gays, banning gay marriage, ending gay benefit packages from employers and making it against the law to provide family employment benefits to gay families in some States.

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