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Same-sex marriage is legal in Canada right? How controversial is it? How entangled is religion and government there?
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There was quite a fight from the religious right to stop same sex marriage. In fact, even the liberal government, in the late 90's passed legislation that defined marriage as being between one man and one woman, however, the supreme court striked it down when it was challenged in court as being against the charter of rights and freedoms - that was in 2001. Since then different provinces, following the supreme court ruling started legalizing same sex marriage since the legal precedent had been set and finally in 2003 the federal goverment passed a bill granting the right to same sex marriage across Canada. Since then, the only time I see controversy is when there is an election, but I think most canadians see it as a dead issue. When the conservatives formed the present government they promised to re-open the debate to appease their religious right voters, but they've been stalling and recent polls indicate that most canadians are against re-opening a done deal and by doing so putting into question the status of now married same sex couples - of which I believe there have been around 10,000 since 2003. Religion doesn't factor into politics too much here - some religious people try, but they aren't very successful a lot of the time.