Five years into the era of legalized gay marriage, we have yet to be consumed by hellfire. What was once a novelty is now no more remarkable than a visit to city hall for a parking permit. Still, some gay marriages are more of a to-do than others. On the fifth of August, on the beach of a wilderness resort outside Elliot Lake, in front of Barbara Hall and other big-name politicos, deputy premier and Health Minister George Smitherman will marry Christopher Peloso, a retail operations manager for Lindt Chocolates.

When Smitherman announced to the media that they’d set a date, it took a moment to believe that anyone would want to marry him. This is the same Smitherman who John Baird, of all people, called a bully. He may be the province’s first openly gay cabinet minister, but he’s more notorious for his fuck-you approach to overhauling the $38-billion health care system, in which he compared optometrists to terrorists and fancy hospital atriums to the Taj Mahal. It earned him the nickname “Furious George.” His friends attribute his pushiness to passion. And while everyone waited for him to self-destruct, Smither­man has proven to be the most effective force in McGuinty’s government.

That he made a point of announcing his nuptials is typical. In front of reporters, he once broke into tears over unseemly conditions in a nursing home. Last year, at an event for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, he admitted that in the mid-’90s he had beaten an addiction to “party drugs” (knowing, surely, that the ensuing hullabaloo couldn’t be bad for his image—in fact, he came out looking courageous). Even our interview has a whiff of choreography. He decides we’ll meet in his riding, at the ornate Parliament Street Tim Hortons; naturally, he seems to know every other person who comes in the door.

Smitherman and Peloso share a Victorian row house nearby, in the shadow of the St. Jamestown towers. They’ve been an item for two years but have known each other for 13. “I consider myself very fortunate that by the time I got my shit together I still had a shot with him,” Smitherman says. “I had a little maturing to do.”