From here:
Saskatchewan’s highest court has ruled that marriage commissioners who are public servants cannot refuse to marry same-sex couples.
The decision by the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal rejects two proposals from the provincial government that would allow some or all marriage commissioners to refuse to perform a service involving gay or lesbian partners if it offended their religious beliefs.
The government proposed that marriage commissioners who were employed before the law changed in 2004 could refuse to perform the services. It also proposed a second option where all marriage commissioners could refuse.
But the court noted that marriage commissioners are appointed by the government to perform non-religious ceremonies and are the only option for some same-sex couples seeking to tie the knot.
This decision has the unusual property of making sense and not making sense simultaneously.
It make sense because, from a secular perspective, once marriage has been redefined – and it has been – to mean just about anything you want it to mean, you cannot deny it to those who would have been outside its purview before redefinition. We shall see how long it takes for incestuous and polyamorous marriages to be accepted by the courts.
It makes no sense in the context of religion – which, after all, was the inventor of marriage – since all major religions define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. Western Anglicanism excepted, of course, but, then, it is no longer a major religion.
Not so much a nail in the coffin of marriage. That coffin is pretty much sealed already. But in the coffin of freedom? Yes! Freedom of conscience will soon be dead, and that is a very dangerous freedom to kill.
Just one more thing to confirm what I have suspected for some time. That even though Canada does not have a Constitution seperation of Church and State, the Government(s) has effectively become aithiest. There is no room for religion.