Ontario politicians have been trying to dissociate themselves from organized religion for years and they are now being asked to give it a presence right under their noses.

Cheri DiNovo, a New Democrat MPP and United Church minister, says she will introduce a resolution when the legislature meets next requiring it set aside a room in its main building where staff and visitors of all faiths can pray, meditate or otherwise celebrate their many different religions.

Representatives of Roman Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists and Sikhs say they support this. DiNovo has been an MPP only a few months after winning

by-election, but quickly won a reputation by leading a campaign for a $10 an hour minimum wage that has taken off and knows how to get heard.

Premier Dalton McGuinty, when asked, said he is receptive to the idea, but it is an issue for the Speaker, Mike Brown, who said he certainly is open to it, but MPPs will have to decide.

But what else could either say? The last thing politicians want to be seen doing is preventing someone from praying.

But most MPPs increasingly have looked for a separation between church and state, feeling issues should be judged on what they see as their factual merits rather than the precepts of a religion.

The time also has passed when religious groups had huge influence at the legislature. The ultra Protestant Orange movement ran Ontario for many years.

As recently as two decades ago, a Roman Catholic cardinal - Catholics had become important - was able to whisper in the ear of a Progressive Conservative premier, William Davis, and get the province to fund Catholic education until the end of high school.

But a more recent Conservative premier, Mike Harris, when pressed by churches to provide more for the poor instead of cutting welfare benefits, shrugged them off by saying they did not know the burden of responsibility.

Premiers used to stress that they were ardent churchgoers. The last Conservative premier, Ernie Eves, let it be known he was an altar boy in an Anglican church and his mother sang in its choir.

McGuinty has not talked much of his religious background, but his wife Terri once said he is "a man of integrity, a true Christian."

The legislature still starts each day's proceedings with The Lord's Prayer and a second prayer asking "God, our Heavenly Father" to guide MPPs, but there is increasing recognition that these are essentially Christian in a province that's growing less Christian. Few MPPs arrive in time for them, anyway.

MPPs overwhelming supported changing provincial laws to facilitate same-sex marriage after the courts ruled refusing to allow marriage between two people of the same sex was discrimination that breached the Constitution.

Catholic leaders objected, saying the conjugal partnership between a man and woman is a basis of human society, and were joined by Protestant fundamentalists, who threaten to become the same, right-wing extremist political powers they are in the United States.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has said it will meet Catholic politicians regularly in their home areas to remind them of their church's teachings and tell them they have an obligation to uphold them in developing policies.

The recently installed Catholic Archbishop of Toronto, Thomas Collins, went further and said he favours refusing communion to Catholic politicians who do not follow church teachings in their work, although only as a last resort.

McGuinty also has offended two religious groups, Muslims and Jews, with his so-called Sharia law in which the province will no longer accept rulings of faith-based courts in family disputes because it feels they favor men.

The request for a prayer room at the legislature sounds insignificant beside these controversies, although it could produce complaints that the government would be giving religious groups an inside track that's denied others.

Most MPPs probably would prefer it to go away, but they cannot afford to be seen as anti-religion and would have difficulty voting against it.