OTTAWA -The gay marriage debate dominating the House of Commons, provincial election campaigns and water-cooler conversations across Canada could go the way of the capital punishment and abortion debates that once riveted the country, say veterans of the political trenches.
Today's white-hot heat is often tomorrow's burnt out bulb. Fifteen years after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down federal abortion laws, the land is still without replacement legislation and the issue has been pushed to the radical fringes of the country's political discourse.
No federal elections have been won or lost on the abortion question, and few politicians today care to risk political capital in reopening the debate.
Could same-sex marriage also fade to oblivion?
"This is no Mickey Mouse issue," Liberal backbencher Pat O'Brien said last week after a razor-thin majority of MPs voted against a Canadian Alliance motion that would have reaffirmed marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Others predicted it will dominate an anticipated federal election next spring.
"This giant has been awakened and will not be lulled back to sleep," said Charles McVety, speaking for a coalition of pro-family and religious groups.
But veterans from both sides of the marriage issue say people should take a deep breath and recall past battles.
Conservative Senator Lowell Murray remembers well that January day in 1988 when he was handed the hottest potato in the federal legislative oven.
The Supreme Court had struck down Canada's abortion law and Tory Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appointed Murray to chair the cabinet committee drafting new legislation, and quickly.
"The thought in everybody's minds - in caucus, our political advisors, among ministers and the media - was that this needed to get done and over with before the inevitable election of 1988," Murray recalled.
Not only did Murray's committee miss its deadline, but 15 years later there is still no abortion law in Canada.
Abortion was not a campaign issue in the 1988 free trade election but consumed Parliament in 1990, when the Tory legislation finally came to a vote after Commons debates that raged literally through the night. It narrowly passed the House, only to be defeated by a split vote in the Senate on Jan. 31, 1991. It was not an issue in the 1993 election.
Murray personally opposes the redefinition of marriage, although he has supported same-sex equity measures on a broad front. He sees parallels between the abortion debate, an earlier fight over restoring capital punishment and the same-sex battle.
"At the local level, capital punishment used to hijack every all-candidates meeting, you could depend on it," said Murray.
"At one point, going on 70 per cent of Canadian people seemed to be in favour of restoring capital punishment. Yet they kept electing parliaments - Liberal, NDP, some Tory - that were opposed to capital punishment."
Same-sex marriage, said Murray, is "a hot issue and an emotional issue. But I don't think you can take for granted that it's going to turn votes."
John Harvard, a Liberal MP from Manitoba first elected in 1988, sees similarities in that same-sex marriage and abortion are both hot-button social questions precipitated by court rulings that rejected the status quo.
"Emotional debates are best dealt with in some other atmosphere," than Commons debates and election campaigns, he said.
"I'm convinced that the noise (same-sex opponents) make is far disproportionate to their numbers," said Harvard, who supports the legislative change.
"We politicians are jumpy. After you've got 25 or 30 letters saying, if you do this, we're not voting for you . . . that can create a lot of skittishness."
And while everyone says the marriage definition must be dealt with legislatively - unlike abortion - the fact is the government could drag its feet indefinitely.
"The state actually does have to sanction, for civil purposes, either marriage or some other kind of union so that individuals can have access to the rights and entitlements that married couples now have," said Patrick Monahan, dean of Osgoode Hall law school at York University.
That makes it a more pressing legislative issue than abortion.
If Ottawa was to dither indefinitely, Monahan added, court rulings such as those in B.C. and Ontario would fill the void.
"If the government did nothing then the common law rule in effect will become - by default - the rule across Canada. That will then define the legal entitlement to marry."
