Multicultural demonstration against same-sex marriage on French Mother's Day
Today, an update from my spy in a Paris that turns out not be all that gay after all. My spy confirms the original report about the nature of the crowd of demonstrators:
The participants in the manif were quite diverse, including some on the Left (in addition to French hard hats from the CGT, also young, middle class socialists), but overwhelmingly ordinary families of all stripes, with their children. There were specific contingents from the UMP, some RBM (new name for the FN), but not in any official way, and Catholics and other religious groups of all stripes, though the media sought out the most conservative to interview. Generally it was a huge middle class family grouping, though anarchists, as usual, came in to smash things at the end. A comédienne, "Frigide Bardjot", with dyed blonde hair, was general organizer, and tried to keep political parties at arms length; but she had many death threats after several months, and did not march on the 26th.The government said it was merely putting through what it had promised on its electoral platform of last year. But this was number 32 on the platform, and it was not discussed at all during the campaign. The Socialists did not bring it up, and the Right feared that doing so would cost points in the close election that was expected. The media stressed that polls prior to the election showed more than 50% of French favoring the law. But after months of actual debate after the election, the points raised about rights of adoption by homosexual couples, effects on revising school manuels in primary grades, the French legal code forbidding speech considered hateful (with its effect on future discussion of this issue) had the effect of changing popular opinion to at least 54% opposed on the eve of the law's adoption. Once presented in the National Assembly, the government imposed strict party discipline and rammed the measure through (though three Socialists risked their careers and voted against - with a similar number of the UMP doing the reverse).
Get a load of this:
Wait. The Socialists are defending marriage?A particular point, hardly discussed by the media, is the changed rule on determining family name subsequent to the homosexual marriage law. Initially the law proposed that the family name of homosexual couples be hyphenated, with priority accorded alphabetically to establish the first of the hyphenated names. But then it was pointed out that such a rule would discriminate between homosexual and heterosexual couples. Ainsi, in good Cartesian fashion, the solution was that the same rule would apply to heterosexual couples, who also would have hyphenated names, with name priority determined according to alphabetic priority. What will happen for the second and third generations, including the alphabetic priority of four or more names, has not been discussed, as far as I know. There may be a compromise whereby couples have the option of discussing and settling this among themselves prior to the marriage --perhaps even during the ceremony. Bref - you may understand why perhaps more than a million people, of otherwise diverse persuasions assembled on different weekends on the Champs de Mars to give a mighty Bronx cheer à la française.
