As I watch the same-sex marriage debate rage on countless fronts, my mind keeps wandering back to God. I imagine he's not at all pleased with where this issue has taken us.

Those opposed to legalizing same-sex marriage seem bent on convincing us such unions represent nothing short of an abomination in the eyes of whatever deity we follow. They pull out the religion card every chance they get to help the unenlightened among us appreciate that we're playing with fire if we dare go against God's will.

Sorry, I'm not buying it.

No God I know would willingly segregate an entire segment of the population based solely on sexual orientation. Similarly, no God I know would sanction allowing people who otherwise have no reason to interfere in the lives of their neighbours, to do precisely that.

But I guess it's become perfectly acceptable for some people to do both in His name. It's become acceptable to play this game with gays because it isn't fashionable to marginalize any other demographic group.

I'm having difficulty believing any religion would so willingly lock out an entire subset of its members. I always saw religions as welcoming, nurturing entities. We were supposed to look to our places of worship as havens, to our clergy as guides.

Maybe that's still true -- as long as you're not gay.

Religion has instead morphed into a weapon. Opponents of same-sex marriage use their self-assigned God-given right to justify discriminating against those who do not meet a rigid definition of who is truly worthy.

Their argument has precious little to do with marriage and everything to do with the fact that it represents the last acceptable forum within which some members of our supposedly tolerant society can discriminate.

It's easy to see why religion gives this dirty little process the legitimacy it so clearly does not deserve. After all, discrimination is a tough game these days. If you want to appeal to a mass audience, you can't simply come out and say you hate all members of a given group.

Same-sex marriage opponents clearly need a softer approach, so they trot out the old argument that legalizing it would erode the very meaning of marriage.

I hate to break it to you, folks, but the vaunted institution of marriage has been in trouble for quite some time, and gays have had nothing to do with its decline.

Heterosexuals have done a pretty good job of trashing marriage all by themselves.

According to Statistics Canada, the number of marriages in Canada dropped by 4.5 per cent between 1999 and 2002. In that same period, the number of divorces increased by 1.5 per cent. StatsCan's figures on single-parent and common-law families are scarier: between 1991 and 1996, they increased from 22.7 per cent of all families to 26.3 per cent of all families. That's almost 400,000 more non-traditional families in five years.

Single-parent families, in particular, hold additional risks for today's children. A 1998 Divorce Magazine survey showed 46 per cent of children living in poverty in Canada did so within single-parent families.

Clearly, marriage's difficulties go way back, and the same-sex debate has nothing to do with it.

At the end of the day, any happily married heterosexual who believes allowing gays to marry will erode his or her own marriage is seriously deluded. There are so many ways that married couples can strengthen their marriages and the institution as a whole, and few of them have anything to do with picketing MPs' offices.

If the pseudo-gay-bashers at the core of this campaign spent more time building bridges and less time building walls, we'd all be able to live more harmonious lives -- within our marriages and within society as a whole.

That strikes me as a little closer to what God wants for us.

Next Column: Harry, could you please grow up?