France Legalizes Gay Marriage Despite Vocal and Angry Opposition

[Time]

Controversial legislation establishing marriage and adoption rights for same-intercourse couples cleared final passage in France on April 23 after a 331-to-225 vote in the left-controlled Parliament. But the protests it has prompted in recent months aren't likely to fade any time soon. As France's opposition conservatives promise to mount legal challenges to block the law's application, leaders of the well-organized and vocal groups who've fought the measure will continue denouncing it as an attack on matrimony and the traditional family unit. The French lower house of Parliament on Tuesday passed the so-called Marriage for All bill, which opens marriage and adoption to same-intercourse couples with identical rights previously limited to heterointercourseual unions. That vote — which was largely split down left-right lines — makes France the ninth E.U. member and the 14th nation in the world to legalize same-intercourse marriage. Opponents decried the legislation — which was one of Socialist President François Hollande's main campaign promises — as deforming time-honored definitions of marriage and endangering children by permitting gay and lesbian couples to adopt. French public opinion was mixed: polls have consistently shown around 60% of people favoring legalization of same-intercourse marriage, with a small majority opposed to adoption rights accompanying that reform. (MORE: Is Gay Marriage Too Progressive for the French?) Indeed, given France's rather liberal, live-and-let-live social reputation abroad, it struck some foreign observers as ironic the French took so long — and battled so bitterly — to legalize same-intercourse marriage that purportedly stodgier "Anglo-Saxon" countries like the U.S. and U.K. now appear to be moving toward rapidly. Be that as it may, backers of Marriage for All cheered its final passage — and expect, once the law clears constitutional review in late May, the first legal same-intercourse marriages to be performed in June. "It's a generous law, and a law of equality," an elated Christiane Taubira, Socialist Justice Minister and author of the bill, told Parliament after the vote. "We believe the first weddings will be beautiful and that they'll bring a breeze of joy, and that those who

Via: TIME GlobalSpin