What Mr. Harper thinks of Social Conservatives.

The CPC made a promise to have a vote on same sex marriage if they were elected. They muddied that promise and greatly diluted it turning it into a request to see if people were interested in re-opening the debate.

This allowed Mr. Harper the opportunity to give the appearance of having fulfilled his campaign promise but that appearance would only be accepted by poorly educated mis-informed people without the capacity to read and/or those who just weren't genuinely interested in politics.

This allowed Mr. Harper the opportunity to be able to say to socially conservatives "at least I tried" when his attempt was laughable.

The vast majority of MP's didn't even attend the debate. It wasn't an important enough issue. The reasons for having the vote was about a campaign promise only. It was a distant lack luster presentation. He never wanted to win this. He wanted to be able to say he fulfilled a campaign promise so that social conservatives would feel slightly less suckered.

And to top it off Mr. Harper and the CPC decided that this topic is closed and they will never bring it up in the future.

This meaningless exercise in futility is what so many well-intentioned socially conservative people sacrificed the lives of the unborn for when they decided to emphasize SSM over abortion and when they decided to support pro-choice people because they were against SSM.

The social conservatives were played for fools by Mr. Harper.

And in 2007 (my guess for the next election date) they will demonstrate themselves to be fools when they re-elect people that show such utter disdain for them.