FRANCE FEUDS OVER GAY VOWS: From the New York Times

...After all, the French were the inventors of the Civil Solidarity Pact, a creative legal mechanism introduced in 1999 that gives all adult couples -- regardless of gender or sexual orientation -- many of the same fiscal and social rights as those who are formally wedded.

But that was before Noel Mamere, the leader of France's tiny leftist Green Party and a member of Parliament, announced last month that he would defy tradition (and some would say the law) by officiating at the country's first gay wedding ceremony.

Like many French politicians, Mr. Mamère holds multiple offices. So he is using his perch as mayor of an obscure southwest town named Begles to conduct his social experiment, joining two thirty-something men, a supermarket clerk and a health-care worker, in marriage on June 5.

"France is a hypocritical country," said Mr. Mamère in explaining his decision. "Marriage here is traditionally considered a Judeo-Christian value, a very strong symbol organized around heterosexuality. For many, the validity of marriage is procreation. It's an extremely archaic vision in my opinion, an idea encased in glass. The Americans are much more advanced in the fight against discrimination despite their puritanical and their slightly Protestant bent."

Mr. Mamere argues that nothing in the Napoleonic Code, the vast compilation of civil laws that has governed since 1804, specifies that marriage has to be between a man and a woman. He has also threatened to take any challenge of his action to the European Court of Human Rights, a European Union court based in Strasbourg.

His crusade has enraged the center-right French government, riven the Socialist Party and touched off a fierce intellectual battle in newspaper opinion columns and television talk shows over the rights of homosexuals in France. ...

Justice Minister Dominique Perben has served notice that Mr. Mamere's gay marriage will be null and void in the eyes of the French state. "To argue that sexual difference between spouses is not written into the civil code is to lie," Mr. Perben told the right-leaning daily Le Figaro. ...

Today, for the majority of the French, even homosexual marriage is no big deal. According to a poll released this week by the Ipsos polling agency, 57 percent of all Frenchmen and 75 percent of those under 35 believe that gay couples should be allowed to marry. That compares with only 24 percent in the United States, other polls show.

Still, France is more conservative than much of the rest of Europe, far behind Denmark (82 percent) and the Netherlands (80 percent), for example, as well as Luxembourg, Sweden, Spain, Belgium. Norway, Switzerland and Germany.

The Civil Solidarity Pact initative gives couples housing rights, health and welfare benefits, the right to file a joint tax return and to inheritance.

But proponents of gay marriage insist that it is marriage-lite, an unsatisfying compromise that does not go far enough. It does not allow couples to adopt children, for example. Couples have to wait three years before they can file joint tax returns. It is sometimes difficult for a non-French partner in a civil pact to receive a residence permit or French citizenship, especially for foreigners from places like North Africa.

Lynne Petrovic, a 38-year-old American therapist, and Ségolène Rubin, a 36-year-old Frenchwoman, were joined by a civil solidary pact at the French consulate in San Francisco in 2001 and married on Valentine's Day at San Francisco's city hall. But they want to be married under French law largely so that they can share custody over Ms. Rubin's biological son.

"It's not gay marriage in the end that worries the French," says Ms. Rubin. "It's homosexuals raising kids." But, she adds: "We're not militants. We're talking about a little family unit. It's our reality."

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posted by Eve at 12:27 AM VOTE

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