I never thought I'd blush during a justice committee hearing.  But there really are some colourful discussions under way in the House of Commons standing committee on justice and human rights, which has been holding hearings on legalizing same-sex marriage.  As an evangelical Canadian, I'm from a relatively staid lot, and having MP Hedy Fry ask the director of faith and public life for 5,300 churches of my persuasion if he believed homosexual sex could be erotic is something that I haven't heard come up in church business before.  Or to hear MP Svend Robinson ask a celibate bishop if he believed gay men should never have sex is out of my version of the ordinary, to say the least.
(The answer to both questions, by the way, was "yes.")

Canadians have come a long way since 1967 when then-justice minister Pierre Trudeau mused about revising the Criminal Code to relax laws against homosexuality.  "It's bringing the laws of the land up to contemporary society," he said.  "Take this thing on homosexuality.  I think the view we take here is that there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation .  .  .  what's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code.  When it becomes public this is a different matter, when it relates to minors this is a different matter."

It has been a short road from the bedrooms of the nation to the public arena.  In 1982, a radical gay newspaper, Body Politic, was acquitted for the second time of charges arising from an article advocating sex between men and boys.
Other rulings have followed, many helping the country's 34,200 gay couples (as recently counted by Statistics Canada) win for themselves the civil rights and responsibilities of marriage.

But same-sex couples still don't have federal government recognition of the sanction of marriage itself.  It's that enormous, complex institution, laden with eons of values, that is the final step in this evolution out of the bedroom.

"In question here is an institution that is well established in people's minds and recognized in laws as having a significance," Gilles Marchildon, the executive director of Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere (EGALE), recently told the committee hearings.  "[Marriage] recognizes and values relationship.  And that's why we would like to have access to that institution as well."
 

Why would anyone object?  The House committee has also heard compelling counterarguments presented by McGill University's Institute for the Study of Marriage, Law, and Culture, calling for "sober-minded Canadian caution" on this social experiment.  "Marriage is the procreative mainframe of human life .  .  .  there is an organic dimension to heterosexual bonding that is absolutely unique," said Dr.  Daniel Cere.  "When we change the definition of marriage, it is going to have some fundamental implication [on] how we see parenthood -- the connection of children to parents – because as a society we are sensing that we are no longer privileging .  .  .  this special connection of children to their natural parents.  .  .  .  Marriage, as an institution, has done that very well."

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops spoke too, on behalf of pastors who care for millions of Canadians.  Clearly, they were in no mood to uproot an institution that they described as deeply entwined in the anthropological, personal, social and religious dimensions of our culture.

Yet the United Church of Canada offered a different view.  It said that nothing short of fully recognized same-sex marriages was acceptable, arguing the justice committee's consideration of creating a parallel registry for same-sex couples would not promote equality.

Charter concerns also turn up in the counterarguments.  Although EGALE has adopted a policy supporting each religion's freedom to choose whether or not to marry same-sex couples, evangelicals have spent more than $1-million in the courts in the past few years defending their right to hold their religious views.  If marriage is redefined to include same-sex partners, Bruce Clemenger, faith and public life director for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, warns legal challenges on churches will only escalate.

"If government agencies are going to try and assert themselves and tell Christians what is an appropriate application of their faith and what is not, then we can expect, at some point, someone to challenge the ability of a pastor who refuses to marry a couple on theological grounds," said Mr. Clemenger.

Just as homosexuals are true to their values, so those who believe that God does not sanction gay marriage will be true to theirs.  As this debate heats up, many of us are reminding ourselves of a few anchoring truths.

Christians have chosen to say yes to being in a covenant relationship with God, a voluntary relationship that carries benefits and obligations.  The highest law in this covenant is that our lives are to be marked by love.  That's why I reject the label that disputing same-sex marriage is about homophobia.  I'd say, instead, that it is simply about being true to our values.  My pastor would refuse to marry a gay couple, yet he had a lesbian in his own wedding party.  That reflects values of love and truth.

All I have to do is try and share the TV remote control with my husband for a night and I'm reminded why the Bible calls marriage a "profound mystery."

That mystery is why, despite the arguments of the loving gay couples who are seeking recognition of their right to marry, I will have to say, I am sorry, I cannot redefine what was created long before any government, courts or church.  These rules are not up to us.  I can't pick and choose which parts of God's covenant I'll take, and which ones I won't.  My position may not be valid in a secular government debate assessing cultural risk.  But it's working pretty well at my house.

Lorna Dueck is a broadcaster/producer.