It was tortuous, it featured epic demonstrations in Paris and the rest of France by citizens favoring or opposing it, there was even the occasional burst of violence in the four months of debate leading up to today’s vote by the French National Assembly on the legalization of gay marriage. But in the end, it wasn’t even close.
The National Assembly voted today (April 23) 331-225, with 10 abstentions, to legalize gay marriage and gay adoption in France. The vote followed almost 137 hours of debate in the assembly. It makes France the 14th nation in the world to legalize gay marriage, and the ninth in Europe. The United States has not done so, as a nation, though nine states have legalized same-sex marriage so far, all of them north of the Mason-Dixon Line and, with Iowa’s exception, east of the Mississippi.
For France, it was an unusually heated slog that began with a Jan. 13 protest in Paris that drew between 340,000 people (according to police) and 800,000 people (according to organizers), with the larger estimate making it one of the biggest demonstrations in Paris in half a century.
The demonstration preceded by two weeks the opening of debate in the National Assembly (the equivalent of Washington’s House of Representatives). The assembly passed the bill on first reading in mid-February. In march 24, yet another colossal demonstration in Paris, this one drawing 300,000 people (according to police) or 1.4 million (according to organizers), with 98 arrests. The demonstrators opposed gay marriage, and focused on opposition to gay adoptions.
Last week, French President Francois Hollande–embattled on so many fronts–denounced homophobic and violent incidents, while right-wing lawmakers from the floor of the assembly link gay marriage and adoption to “the assassination of children.” Between the first and second reading of the bill, no fewer than 8,500 amendments were submitted.
The United States Supreme Court heard arguments in two gay marriage cases on March 26 and 27. One case concerns the constitutionality of Proposition 8 in California, which overturned a California Supreme Court decision that had legalized gay marriage. The other concerns the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which President Clinton signed into law in 1996, and which denies couples in same-sex marriages from receiving federal marriage benefits, including benefits from inheritance. The court is scheduled to decide both cases by the end of June.
Gay marriage is prohibited in Florida by law, and by an amendment to the state constitution, which 62 percent of voters approved in 2008.
Jon Hardison says
Oh great! France doing ANYTHING has been enough of a reason for us not too. Here’s hoping we haven’t completely lost our minds.
David R Campbell says
I am well aware that this is a touchy subject with the majority of citizens around the world.
This is my own two-cents-worth.
Why is it such an important concern what the person on the other side of the fence is doing?
We all know that there are millions of children around our world living in horrible situations! :(
Yet because we as an intelligent society, supposedly, ready and able to handle our affairs for better or worse, would hinder giving shelter to a child because…for what reason?
What way in hell can anyone explain denying a child safety and comfort when that is all that is needed?
Straight or gay: Whether it be parent or sibling or friend, we are going to have to live with it.
hugs
Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui says
Same-sex marriage is an injustice, a tyrannical ploy being perpetrated upon our society, the pernicious consequences of which are simply mocked and laughed at by its supporters. Ignorance and prejudice have taken the place of knowledge and reason. Caprice and passion substituted for prudence and virtue. The happiness of society, the good of all families, and the welfare of mankind fall victim to the injustice of selfish adult love, which calculates every thing for itself, while taking no notice of a child’s best interest or the public advantage of a government promoting ONLY the traditional family unit.
Same-sex marriage is antithetical to the Rule of Law, for the principle object of laws in general is to correct bad inclinations, to prevent vicious habits, to hinder their effects, and to eradicate the passions; or at least to contain them within proper limits. Same-sex marriage makes an implicit statement that mothers and fathers are interchangeable, and that sex is irrelevant to parenting. Once same-sex marriage becomes legally and socially acceptable, more women will decide to raise children together. Teen aged boys without fathers are at risk for juvenile delinquency, violence, criminal activity, gang membership, and incarceration. Teen aged girls without fathers are at risk for early sexual activity, multiple sex partners, out of wedlock pregnancies, and sexually transmitted disease.
Same-sex marriage is perfectly contrary to the principle of marriage, having more resemblance to divorce and adultery, same-sex marriage purposely separates a child from at least one biological parent, thereby creating broken homes, not as a matter of extraordinary circumstances, but as routine. Same-sex marriage proponents callously ignore a child’s Natural Right to know, and be raised by, both biological parents, and make the most preposterous and pretentious claim that marriage was instituted by civil society primarily for the benefit of any two loving adults. Take away Natural Laws, and that moral tie which supports justice and honesty in a whole nation and establishes also particular duties in families, or in other relations of life; and man becomes the most savage and ferocious of all animals,licentiousness becomes the consequence of independence.
After what has been said, let us be satisfied with observing, that the fitness in favor of the sanction of traditional marriage, is so much stronger and more pressing, as same-sex marriage throws into the system of humanity an obscurity and confusion, which borders on very much upon the absurd, if it does not come quite close up to it. There is, certainly, no comparison between traditional marriage and same-sex marriage, in respect to beauty and fitness; the first is a work of the most perfect reason; the second is defective, and provides no manner of remedy against a great many disorders. Now even this alone points out sufficiently on which side the truth lies, and to reject this truth leads us insensibly to a kind of pyrrhonism, which would also be a subversion of the Rule of Law and social order.
Here are two truths regarding marriage: (1) A man creating a family with another man is not equal to creating a family with a woman, and (2) denying children parents of both genders at home is an objective evil. Kids need and yearn for both.
Same-sex marriage PURPOSELY separates a child from at least one biological parent. Non-biological parents lack the advantage of consanguineous insight leaving them all too often ill-prepared to protect the child from unfamiliar hazards. Left unrecognized and unattended, vicious habits, and irregular passions, obfuscate the mind; and neglect, levity, and prejudices of the ill-equipped non-biological parents precipitate a child into the grossest of errors, rendering the child’s conduct a burden to the happiness of both society and the life of the child.
Same-sex marriage disregards the natural order of procreatory responsibility, not only confusing the natural disposition of parental authority; but undermining the legal principle that children have a right to a relationship with their biological parents, depriving a child access to their biological parent’s genetic, cultural and social heritage, not for extraordinary circumstances, but as a matter of routine. Same-sex marriage amounts to institutionalized adultery through a hostile takeover of civil society by the State. Children will no longer be entitled to their biological parents, as the transitory wants of same-sex adults will have taken precedence over a child’s best interest.
Children are not pets one purchases from rescue shelters(adoption clinics) and puppy mills(insemination and surrogacy). Children are human beings endowed with a natural desire to be procreated from an engendered act of love between a husband and a wife. Same-sex marriage is adulterous by nature and thereby destructive to not only children, but to civilization.
Same-sex marriage proponents selfishly demand “Marriage Equality”, yet, in return, they offer LESS-THAN-EQUAL protection of the child’s happiness than can be afforded through the presence of both biological parents. In the name of”Marriage Equality”, same-sex marriage leaves the child fully cognizant that his family is, in all truth, not at all “equal”, natural, nor complete. The use of the term “marriage Equality” by same-sex marriage proponents selfishly ignores the child’s perspective of “equality”.
Same-sex marriage proponents profess that it is love which gives the right to join the institution of marriage, yet, in doing so, they selfishly violate the principle LOVING objective of this noble institution; to protect a child’s Natural Right to be raised by both biological parents.
In fine, same-sex marriage surmounts to nothing more than an unnatural extravagance which the supporters most ignorantly claim to be a “right”.
“No one has a right to do that which, if everybody did it, would destroy society.” —Immanuel Kant
Gia says
France has more garbage than before.