Does saying bigoted things make you a bigot? I'm gonna go with 'yes'

I've been thinking about this for a little while now.

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): What some of us who are opposed to this bill find difficult to accept is the lecturing that seems to go on, that if you're opposed to the bill, you're somehow opposed to democracy, that if you're opposed -- you take a comment about this member's remarks when it was the Attorney General who first raised the spectre of South Africa having something to do with this vote. It was not this member; it was the sponsor of this legislation. I just have had it up to here with being called a racist or a bigot because I cannot accept the fact that a spouse is a member of the same sex. That is my right; indeed, my responsibility. I can handle it full well, Mr Minister, without a problem. I just don't agree with it.

I think I have a right, I indeed have an obligation on the part of the people who I represent and on the part of my family to speak from my heart and speak my mind on this issue. I reject any attempt by members of this government to try to muzzle people or try to intimidate us and try to paint this as some kind of a human rights issue. I don't see it in that light. I have a right not to see it in that light if that is my choice and that is my view.

— Ontario Legislature's Hansard for June 9th, 1994.

This was a comment made by a member of the Liberal opposition during Rae's same-sex marriage bill, Bill C-167. I remember watching this debate on television and when Mr. Mahoney said that he was tired of being called a bigot, I thought: you just don't get it, do you?

3rd-party leader, Mike Harris instructed his party to oppose the bill (that was my first hate-on for Harris). The Liberal opposition originally offered to support the bill, but backed out and made it a free vote. Premier Rae also made the bill a free vote for his party (one of my biggest disappointments in Rae).

Mahoney ultimately went into federal politics, as a member of Chrétien's government, but during some re-organization of ridings, he lost the Liberal candidacy to Carolyn Parrish (who was later expelled from the party).