Gay Wedding Bells For Canadian Cabinet Minister?
by The Canadian Press
Posted: October 7, 2005
7:30 pm ET

(Ottawa) Liberal MP Scott Brison hinted Friday that wedding plans may be in the works for him — a union that would have the prime minister's emphatic blessing.

The openly gay public works minister recalled Paul Martin's half-joke to him in June as same-sex marriage cleared the Commons amid a bruising national debate.

"The prime minister said to me after the vote: 'Well, after all I've been through on this Brison, you'd better get married.' "

Asked if he plans to tie the knot, Brison coyly offered: "Stay tuned.

"It's certainly a possibility," he added, during a roundtable interview with The Canadian Press.
Brison doesn't showcase or downplay his sexuality, saying he's not a gay politician, but a politician who happens to be gay.

The Liberal MP for Kings-Hants, a rural riding in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley, declined to offer any other details on his potential betrothed.

He has a new partner since ending a long-term relationship last winter.

Otherwise gregarious and always quotable, Brison, 38, has carefully guarded his personal life since becoming an MP in 1997.

He came out of the closet three years ago just before announcing his bid to lead the former Progressive Conservative Party.

He lost the leadership to Peter MacKay, whose move to help merge the Conservatives with the Canadian Alliance only added to their bitter rivalry.

Brison was asked Friday about his penchant for "tweaking" his former foe with a running catalogue of trademark barbs.

"I've never tweaked him once," Brison said with a laugh. "And if any of those rumors get out, I mean, I told him that was between us."

Brison knee-capped the fledgling united Conservative Party in 2003 with a scathing defection to the Liberals.

"I have no interest in being part of a right-wing debating club where we get together at conventions and debate how to privatize sidewalks," he said at the time.

The former investment banker entered Paul Martin's cabinet just six months later and beat electoral odds by winning in 2004.

Brison says he could never have felt at home with a Conservative party that has voiced plans to roll back same-sex marriage rights if it ever formed the government.

That would amount to a first-ever repeal of rights guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, he added.

Brison's life as a gay man would be very different were it not for the assurance of freedom from discrimination, he said.

"I would not . . . have the opportunity to be doing what I'm doing today."

University and high school students regularly remind him that his is a role model, reluctant or not, Brison said.

"Sometimes when somebody can express something like that to you, that you've made a difference in terms of their confidence or their life — not based on something that you've really done, just by the fact that you're there — I don't think I can articulate how that makes me feel."

Brison has been physically and verbally attacked in the past for being gay. But he discounts the pat notion that wealthier, more educated voters in big cities are necessarily more tolerant.
"I think that's all bullshit. In fact Canadians, regardless of where they live, whether they live in small towns or rural communities or big cities, regardless of education . . . are fundamentally decent people who want to do the right thing."

Opinion polls have repeatedly suggested otherwise, indicating that support for gay marriage noticeably drops among rural respondents.

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