Protests Against Same-Sex Marriage Bill Intensify in France

Kenzo Tribouillard/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Riot police officers stood by on Sunday at the end of a demonstration in Paris where tens of thousands of opponents of a same-sex marriage bill had gathered.


By STEVEN ERLANGER and SCOTT SAYARE
Published: April 22, 2013


PARIS — On Tuesday afternoon, France is expected to become the 14th country to legalize marriage for all couples, regardless of gender or sexual orientation..



Remy De La Mauviniere/Associated Press

Wilfred de Bruijn, a Dutch citizen, this month. He was beaten up while walking with his partner in Paris two weeks ago. He posted a photograph of his bloodied face on Facebook, calling it “the face of Homophobia.” It has been shared thousands of times.


The final vote in the legislature is expected to be quick, since the Socialist government of PresidentFrançois Hollande has a safe voting majority. But there has been an intensification of opposition to the billin the past few weeks, as Mr. Hollande’s critics have used demonstrations against it as a way of attacking the president himself.

Though hesitant at first, since polls show a majority of the French favor equal rights for same-sex couples, the center-right Union for a Popular Movement has embraced the demonstrations opposing the bill. The unity around the issue has helped paper over the sharp divisions and rivalries in the party, which is largely rudderless as its leader, former President Nicolas Sarkozy, weighs returning to active politics.

At the margins, the demonstrations have also become more violent and homophobic, with a series of nightly demonstrations last week around Parliament that resulted in clashes with riot police officers and a number of arrests. Even opposition leaders have bemoaned the way harder-right groups have infiltrated the demonstrations, and there has been a small surge in violence against gay men and lesbians, with some beatings and angry, offensive words on social media.

Two weeks ago, a Dutch-born man walking with his partner in Paris was beaten up. The man, Wilfred de Bruijn, posted a photograph of his bloodied face on his Facebook page, calling it “the face of Homophobia.” It has been shared thousands of times. Last week, two gay bars, in Bordeaux and Lille, were attacked, and a same-sex couple was attacked Saturday in Nice outside a gay nightclub.

Some protesters against gay marriage have started calling their movement “the French spring,” and many demonstrators are tying their actions to a generalized anger at Mr. Hollande, whose ratings in the polls continue to fall below previous record lows in a period of economic stagnation and growing unemployment. And there were mild scuffles last week in the National Assembly as an ill-tempered debate on the second reading of the bill finally concluded.

Mr. Hollande and his government have pressed ahead with the bill and condemned homophobia and violence, but the sometimes ugly tone of the protests has prompted the government to accelerate the vote to Tuesday, to get the bill passed and out of the way. Presidential aides say they want the matter finished before another large demonstration planned for this month, though opponents say they will continue to protest in May.

The vote is expected to be rapidly followed by a standard review of the legislation to ensure its accordance with the Constitution and then its signing into law by Mr. Hollande.

On Sunday, demonstrations in Paris passed peacefully, with about 45,000 protesters marching against the bill, according to police figures, and about 3,500 supporters of the legislation conducting their own rally, in part to protest homophobia. “Those who are for more equality must also make themselves heard,” said the Paris mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, who is gay.

Opponents shouted slogans against Mr. Hollande and wrapped themselves in the red, white and blue of the French flag. Some carried children or pushed baby carriages under a slogan that read, “All born of a mom and dad.” Opposition leaders condemned any targeting of homosexuals. The numbers on Sunday were down considerably from the 300,000 who marched last month.

But on Monday, Manuel Valls, the interior minister, accused protesters and political opponents on the right of “unleashing homophobic speech.” Speaking to Europe 1 radio, Mr. Valls conceded that opponents of the bill were “numerous,” but said they represented “a minority compared to the millions” who voted for Mr. Hollande as president a year ago, when he promised to pass a same-sex marriage bill in his first year in office.

Also on Monday, the president of the National Assembly received a letter threatening “war” and attacks on Socialist lawmakers if the lower house approved the legislation, the French news media reported. The letter was said to have contained gunpowder.

In general, politics has come to overshadow the moral and religious questions around the bill, which Roman Catholic, Muslim and Jewish leaders oppose. The bill promises “marriage for all” and more contentiously, polls show, would legalize adoption by same-sex couples. The bill does not mandate state aid for artificial insemination or other assistance in procreation for same-sex married couples, however, which many French oppose. Such a bill may be proposed separately.

Pierre Bréchon, a political scientist at Sciences Po, Grenoble, also known as the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies, sees a gradual change in French attitudes toward personal and sexual rights and freedoms, with the values of the fiercely secular republic arguing for equal rights for all individuals and open to “new forms of family life.”

Young people in France, as in the United States, he said, see marriage as “a fundamental right” for same-sex couples as well as straight ones, while older people are “more marked by Catholicism and remain more traditional” in their views of marriage as an ancient institution that binds men and women and protects children.

While the churches were important at the start of these demonstrations late last year, and religious leaders remain active, now “politicians and political networks are more at the front line,” Mr. Bréchon said. “Their main objective is to support protest against the politics of François Hollande,” tying the marriage issue to the country’s economic difficulties.

France is a conservative, largely Roman Catholic country where few go to church as well as liberal in regard to the rights of the individual, including sexual rights. Mr. Bréchon argued that France had moved further in the last 30 years than other European countries to recognize the rights of gay men and lesbians, and that opinion polls showed the society had moved faster than politicians or the law.

Since 1999, France has had a form of civil union, a civil solidarity pact, which gives couples some rights and protections, but falls short of marriage. While designed for same-sex couples, the pact is overwhelmingly used by heterosexuals who see the union as a kind of “marriage light” that can be dissolved far more easily than marriage.

Like Mr. Valls, Mr. Bréchon said that he believed that once the bill passed, most of the furor would die away, and that even Mr. Sarkozy’s party, should it return to power, would not try to overturn the law.

More than half of the countries in the European Union have some sort of civil union, if not marriage, open to same-sex couples, Mr. Bréchon said. “The movement is clear. It is gradual, but it is clear.”



A version of this article appeared in print on April 23, 2013, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Protests Against Same-Sex Marriage Bill Intensify in France.

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