Same-sex married couples will be counted for the first time in next week's census release on families, and activists aren't happy with the question put to the gay and lesbian community.

The dissent over the historic Statistics Canada query ranges from objections that gays are being relegated to the census questionnaire's "other" box to questions about whether same-sex marriage should be counted at all.

In the words of one activist: "Marriage is marriage... why should we be reflected differently than anyone else?"

For one man who fought on the same-sex marriage frontline, the statistics being released Wednesday will send a powerful message of hope to gays and lesbians around the world, a group he says whose very lives are at risk in some countries just for being gay.

"It's so very important in places like Africa, parts of Latin America, Russia, Israel," said Michael Leshner, a lawyer and one of Canada's first legally married gay men.

"I'm Jewish, and I think it's terribly important for (same-sex) marriage to eventually occur in a place like Israel."

Leshner and his partner, Michael Stark, were married in 2003 - just hours after the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered Toronto to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples.

A similar decision in British Columbia that same year was followed by court rulings in Quebec, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, and New Brunswick.

On July 20, 2005, following the lead of the courts, Canada became the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.