Eat it, Pat!

Well, I do hate to gloat, but I have to. To Pat O'Brien, Grant Hill and Elsie Wayne:

You lost! Take your hate-mongering, homophobic, anti-family, neurotic crusade and stick it somewhere imaginative.

Bouquets of Gray has expanded previous analysis of the new parliament's position on same-sex marriage. From what can be discerned, it would appear that, at most, the anti-gay forces might be able to muster 140 votes. The only way they could get the 155 they'd need to guarantee the reversal of SSM would be if:

123 out of 124 Conservative MPs plus the end up voting against it;
and
The 3 anti-SSM BQ MPs vote against it;
and
All 29 anti-SSM Liberals vote against it.

Now, this is clearly impossible, for several reasons.

First of all, of those 29 Liberals, a number of them do not want to revisit the issue. They would likely vote down any attempt to re-open the debate. But let's assume for argument's sake that they all vote against SSM.

Second, we already know that seven Tory MPs (Jim Prentice, Gerald Keddy, James Moore, Josee Verner, Lawrence Cannon, Garth Turner and John Baird) support same-sex marriage. That means, at most, the Tories will have 117 votes against SSM.

Third, Pat O'Brien's suspiciously absent hate-group Vote Marriage Canada endorsed only 101 of the 124 current Tory MPs. Minus the seven mentioned above, that means that there are still 16 Tory MPs (7 of them from pro-SSM Quebec) whose voting intentions are unclear. Odds are, about half of that 16 would swing in favour of SSM, but again for the sake of argument, let's just pretend that they all vote against SSM.

This leaves us with an absolute (and very improbable) maximum of 149 votes against same-sex marriage.

I wonder if they'll finally give up once they lose again?