The lunch special at the Vancouver eatery was a California Roll box that came with a salad, a soup and beef teriyaki.

The price--$6.95.

As usual, the lunch specials here attracted a diverse crowd including plainclothes cops, office workers, employees from a nearby supermarket and us.

The place was abuzz with conversations ranging from the weather to crime to children and schools.

The story about a Thai princess coming to town and living it up while her country folk cleaned up the mess created by the Boxing Day Tsunami was also mentioned.

Nobody it seemed was interested in the media-manufactured, politically-charged and religiously-whipped issue about same-sex marriage in Canada.

They were not talking about it.

But did this mean they did not care We decided to ask.

The supermarket employees said it was no big deal.

The cop wouldn't talk but shrugged indicating it was not a priority.

The pair of office workers opined the government should be worried about how it is spending our money instead of spending millions on a non-issue.

Another couple felt the state had no business in the bedroom and "that should be that".

Two students giggled and said it was an important issue but had no idea about what we were asking them.

Like this corner of Vancouver, it is becoming abundantly clear that the average Joe and Jospehine's view on the so called same sex marriage battle in Ottawa is one of amusing nonchalance.

Who can blame them

The hypocritical Liberals have flip-flopped on the issue so much that whatever they are promising now for "equality rights" bears no meaning to the general public.

At the start the Liberals were cowards and instead of taking a stand on the issue pushed the courts to decide.

Then in 1999, Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Liberals who were under Jean Chretien voted in favour of a Reform party motion which called for the sanctity of marriage as "the union of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others."

After that the then-justice minister Anne McLellan assured Canadians "the (Liberal) government has no intention of changing the definition of marriage, or of legislating same-sex marriages."

In 2003, Martin reversed his stand as it was obviously no longer politically expedient.

Today Martin says he considers the recognition of same-sex marriage so important that he is ready to call an election on it in order to uphold the Charter.

In two weeks, the Liberal government, which oh so conveniently made gay marriages a non-issue during the last election, plans to introduce legislation in the House of Commons allowing same-sex marriage.

Stephen Harper's Conservatives have started taking out advertisements to run in weekly and ethnic community newspapers following attacks on same-sex marriage from Sikh and Roman Catholic religious leaders.

South of the border special interest groups and right-wing Bush-backers plan to join the fray and escalate friction in the "great exercise in democracy."

As for many in the big media, they are running around doing polls and competing with each other to get better and higher-level rhetoric to fuel the manufactured debate.

What makes this non-issue so comically infuriating is that seven out of 10 provinces and three territories already allow same sex marriages.

In some there already have been same-sex splits.

So what is the real benefit of all this talk, fight and vote

For most of us, a gay marriage is no more remarkable than an opposite-sex marriage.

It is a non-issue in our everyday lives and should be a non-issue in Canadian politics.

The Asian Pacific Post