Obviously marriage is not a synonym for morality. But stable marriages and families do encourage moral behavior.

Do the bishops seriously imagine that legalising gay marriage will result in thousands of parties to heterosexual marriages suddenly deciding to get divorced so they can marry a person of the same sex?

Well marriage doesn't function in the way it used to in terms of deciding our fate but it's in our heads and it determines a lot of our actions. Like right now if you think about gay marriage - and they just started having the first gay marriages in New York - it shows what a potent idea marriage remains for people.

Provincial governments in Canada have terminated the positions of marriage commissioners who have for personal religious convictions not performed same sex marriages. It has happened in Saskatchewan.

Let us be honest with each other. The threat to marriage is not the gays. It is a lack of loving commitment - whether it is found in the form of neglect indifference cruelty or adultery to name just a few manifestations of the loveless desert in which too many marriages come to grief.

I put my career in second place throughout both my marriages and it suffered. I don't regret it. You make choices. If you want a good marriage you must pay attention to that. If you want to be independent go ahead. You can't have it all.

Most of these alternative arrangements so-called arise out of the ruins of marriages not as an improvement of old fashioned marriage.

After a while in marriage it doesn't work anymore. There is something missing there is something wrong. There are few marriages that stay alive forever. We like something and after a while we hate what we used to love.

The facts are plain: Religious leaders who preside over marriage ceremonies must and will be guided by what they believe. If they do not wish to celebrate marriages for same-sex couples that is their right. The Supreme Court says so. And the Charter says so.

But marriage goes in waves. You've got to be patient. People bail and give up on their marriages way too early. They just don't put the work and the effort into it. You've got to suck up your ego a lot of times because that can be a big downfall.