The movement that unsuccessfully opposed a 2013 reform to introduce same-sex marriages in France held its first demonstration in two years on Sunday in Paris, which police estimated drew 24,000 while the organisers claimed an attendance of 200,000.
The movement that led opposition to France’s law allowing for same-sex marriages, which was introduced in May 2013, called its supporters back on the streets of Paris on Sunday, in a test of its strength to influence conservative candidates in next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections. While calling for a repeal of the law, it more realistically also targets, among other issues, adoption rights for gay couples and their access to artificial reproduction methods and surrogate pregnancy. As Lucie Delaporte reports, the largely right-wing and Catholic movement called ‘La Manif Pour Tous’ is, a fact unknown to many in France, part of a broad alliance of similarly-minded campaigning groups across Europe, the United States and Russia.
Militant's torso carried the message 'May fascism rest in hell' in the stunt one day after a far-right historian shot himself dead at the cathedral's altar.
Over the past eight months France has been locked in a fiercely divisive and often violent debate over the government’s same-sex marriage bill, which was finally enshrined into law last Saturday by President François Hollande. Gay rights groups have denounced mounting homophobia amid the hot contestation to the law, while opponents are due to stage a further mass protest in Paris on May 26th. Le Refuge is a national association that offers shelter, medical services and psychological counselling to youngsters who have been rejected and often made homeless by their families because of their homosexuality. It has seen a surge in requests for help since the debate kicked off in earnest last autumn, increasing five-fold over the same period one year earlier. Marine Turchi visited the association’s Paris centre and heard the distressing stories of those for whom it offers a lifeline.
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