FRANCE/FILE: A change in the French law could see gay men and women walking down the aisle as early as 2013 but it has met with opposition from religious groups and family associations

Record ID: 277732

  • Title: FRANCE/FILE: A change in the French law could see gay men and women walking down the aisle as early as 2013 but it has met with opposition from religious groups and family associations
  • Date: 5th November 2012
  • Summary: AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS (APRIL 1, 2001) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF GAY COUPLE, HELENA SAASEM AND ANNE MARIE THUS, GETTING MARRIED
  • Embargoed: 20th November 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Legal System,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA59YJ69WH8QDBEKKORDCL622UR
  • Story Text: Since getting married in Canada in 2010, gay couple Pierre Rouff and Serge Falcou have been fighting to have their union recognised in their native France, without success -- but things may be about to get easier for the pair.
    They have been together since 2004 but as same sex unions are not legal in France they had to cross the Atlantic to tie the knot and have lost subsequent legal challenges to compel the French state to acknowledge their union.
    But President Francois Hollande's Socialist government has promised to change the law. The proposals would see France become the twelfth country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage and are set to be discussed by the country's cabinet on Wednesday (November 7).
    For financier Rouff, the issue is one of fairness.

    "We are not against heterosexual families, we just are gay and wanted, like every heterosexual people, wanted to raise a family. I mean that's very fair," he said to Reuters TV.
    France legalised gender-neutral civil unions in 1999 and almost as many are contracted every year as traditional marriages. Rouff and Falcou already have one of these "PACS" but they do not offer the same rights and responsibilities.

    "We just want to have the same level of security, and the same type of environment if we want to get married because we're in love (with) each other," Rouff said.
    His partner Serge Falcou is a teacher who says he finds it astonishing that a country with a proud history as a champion of the rights of man does not recognise the couple's rights to marry.
    The two men have three teenage children -- two from Falcou's previous relationship and one conceived via a surrogate in the U.K.. Despite their family history, Falcou says they are in every respect a typical family.

    "We have children we're bringing up at home full-time, well, every other week, and everything's going fine. We eat in the same way, we live in the same way, we watch television in the same way, we go on holiday in the same way, everything is the same," he said.
    But Hollande's plans to change the law have met with stiff opposition from religious leaders and family groups. France's leading Roman Catholic prelate said on Saturday that the government's plan would profoundly affect the equilibrium of French society, calling it a reform for a few but not all citizens.
    Elsewhere, family associations oppose the threat to the traditional family unit.
    Tugdual Derville is the director of the Alliance Vita association. He says that marriage is not about love but about families and that children raised by single-sex couples are missing out, deprived of a normal childhood.

    "We acknowledge that a relationship between two people might be full of love, and the idea that these two people might have the desire to reproduce is a feeling which is respectable and recognisable. But at the end of the day, a society knowing how to say no means saying it on behalf of the most vulnerable, the weakest, who is the child. We consider that in the child's interest, the child has the right not to be deliberately deprived of a father or a mother," he said.
    The critics' cries are starting to be heard amongst the public with the most recent polling indicating that support for gay marriage is beginning to drop off in France, dipping below 60 percent.
    But on the streets of Paris's gay district on Sunday, passers by were vocal in their support.
    Accompanied by her daughter on a weekend shopping trip, Stephanie Simonet said all children needed was love and that the sexuality of their parents was unimportant.
    Same-sex marriages are legal in several countries round the world, with the Netherlands being the first to legalise the unions in 2001. Several couples got married at midnight on the day the legislation came into effect.
    LGBTI
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