Same-sex marriage: the Canadian experience

YOUR correspondent Paul Kokoski condemns civil unions in Britain and Northern Ireland (Irish Examiner letters, December 28).

For a resident of Canada to write to an Irish newspaper to condemn an action in Britain might seem strange enough, but I would have thought that a resident of the first Canadian province to legalise same-sex civil marriage in June 2003 would have had enough to worry about at home.

Needless to say, the sky did not fall in during the two-and-a-half years since. The judgements of the Ontario court of appeal and eight other provincial courts have been codified in Canadian federal legislation since last July - including the right of all religious denominations to refuse to perform marriages except as provided by their own beliefs.