OTTAWA -- Canada's top Roman Catholic cardinal says vocal opponents of same-sex marriage will risk criminal charges if the institution is legally extended to include gay and lesbian couples.
"Already, the appeal to conscience in any matter pertaining to homosexuality risks being dismissed as 'homophobia,' " Cardinal Marc Ouellet told a Senate committee hearing arguments for and against Bill C-38, the same-sex marriage law.
"These attempts to intimidate persons who do not share the state's vision of marriage may well multiply after the adoption of Bill C-38. Once the state imposes a new standard affirming that homosexual sexual behaviour is a social good, those who oppose it for religious motives or motives of conscience will be considered as bigots, anti-gay and homophobes, and then risk prosecution."
Cardinal Ouellet said the language used by proponents of homosexual marriage has made it difficult to challenge those unions, even from the pulpit.
There's a type of climate that exists where we no longer feel we can express our opinion," he told reporters after his presentation to the Senate committee.
"We realize if we say certain things we may get accused of homophobia or of hatred, bigotry. . . . Even our priests sometimes do not feel free even to preach on homosexuality on the morality -- sexual morality -- because they are accused of homophobia and they are threatened for prosecution," he said.
"This is an insane atmosphere in our country and our communities and it is not good for religious freedom."
Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, who brought the bill before Parliament, was out of the country yesterday and unavailable for comment.
But his communications director, Denise Rudnicki, dismissed the notion that the bill promotes homosexuality as a social good or that opponents would be prosecuted.
"Bill C-38 has nothing to do with sexual behaviour. It is extending the right to civil marriage to gay and lesbian couples. It makes no comment about social good, although we believe this is good public policy to strengthen families," Ms. Rudnicki said.
"The second issue is that religious freedom is protected. You have the constitutional right to the expression of your religious freedom."
It is not the first time that Cardinal Ouellet has publicly condemned the bill. In January, he said it would unleash nothing less than a cultural upheaval.
Yesterday, he said declaring homosexual marriages to be the equivalent of heterosexual unions is an affront to married men and women.
That is "false, wrong and offensive to people who are married and have committed before society, have produced children for society," he said.
"This is something a homosexual union cannot offer to society, and you would like Canadian society to accept that as justice itself? I have to say I find that completely irrational."
But he said he did not believe Catholic MPs who voted in favour of the same-sex bill should be prevented from taking communion.
Charlie Angus, a New Democrat from Northern Ontario, was denied communion in his diocese of Timmins after he supported the legislation. And Joe Comartin, a New Democrat from Windsor who taught pre-marriage classes in his church, saw his liturgical privileges suspended.
Cardinal Ouellet said politicians must take their own beliefs, and those of their church, into account when they make legislative decisions but they must also have the freedom to act on behalf of their constituents.
"You do not lose your right to belong to a community because you do not vote in the right way," he said.
"We are a community of sinners and we are all sinners in one or the other way so we have to be welcoming for all our members and help them to be more coherent and not to exclude them."
