France’s same-sex marriage law: one man’s painful journey, ten years on
April 23rd marks the tenth anniversary of the French parliament’s approval of legislation allowing people of the same sex the rights of marriage and child adoption. In the run-up to that, the bill was fiercely opposed in mass demonstrations organised by a movement of Catholics, the Right and the far-right. Louis was just 11-years-old when his parents took him on the marches, which he remembers as being fun. Now aged 22 and gay, he looks back on the traumatic years since, growing up in a family of homophobic, traditional Catholics, and says that he hopes to benefit himself from the same-sex marriage law, “to show my parents that one can be homo and happy”. Rozenn Le Carboulec reports.
“One“One day, my parents took me to a demonstration,” wrote Louis (last name withheld), in a post on Twitter back in 2018. “I shouted slogans that I didn’t understand. I was 12-years-old. That day, my parents took me to demonstrate against my own rights. Every time I think about it, I feel sick.”
