Same-sex Bill: Canada may face poll

The proposed same-sex marriage Bill may cause snap poll in Canada, writes Gurmukh Singh.

It has become a hot-button issue. No issue has divided this country so much in its recent history as the proposed same-sex marriage Bill which may cause a snap poll.

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Prime Minister Paul Martin and Opposition leader Stephen Harper have upped the ante, and religious leaders are taking pot shots at the government.

The issue has already marred the prime minister's on-going Asian trip, with Sikh high priest Joginder Singh Vedanti stirring up bishops against Martin by his remarks against the Bill during his India visit.

After the Toronto top bishop's open letter to the prime minister on Thursday, the Canadian Catholic Church too has shot off an open-letter, saying, "At the risk of being judged politically incorrect, we need to recall that the Bill under discussion is offensive to the moral and religious sensibility of a great number of citizens, both Catholic and non-Catholic.

We, therefore, find ourselves at a turning point in the evolution of Canadian society, and the Bill announced by the government threatens to unleash nothing less than a cultural upheaval whose negative consequences are still impossible to predict."