April 23, 2023, 11:53 AM
April 23, 2023, 11:53 AM
In 2013, France became the fourteenth country in the world to approve the same-sex marriage. The debate was heated between supporters and opponents. But today, the political class considers it a fundamental social advance.
“I was wrong. If I had to do it again, I would vote in favour,” said current Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who, as mayor of Tourcoing, had strongly opposed gay marriage, even declaring that he would not marry same-sex couples. .
In the same way, the head of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, also voted against this law. A decade later he claimed that “in recent years” he has been able to marry many same-sex couples as mayor of Angers (west).
They are just two examples within the French political elite that currently consider that the law of “equality marriage” is a social advance with no turning back.
In fact, a “90% or 95% of the political class” would approve this law today, stressed Béchu, who recalled that ten years ago “almost all” of his then right-wing party, Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), rejected it.
France became on April 23, 2013 the 14th country in the world to approve same-sex marriage, an electoral promise of the then socialist president François Hollande.
This law was approved despite the mobilization of an important sector of the French population, mainly conservative and Catholic. They staged numerous demonstrations in the streets, some violent, in which entire families participated, who defended the idea that a “family” should have a father and a mother. Apart from the political debate, homophobic attacks were also recorded.
The then Minister of Justice and main defender of the text, Christiane Taubira, was the target of violent political and racist attacks; Her detractors did not hesitate to threaten her or mock her frontally because of her Caribbean origins (French Guiana). In an interview with the Ouest France newspaper, she declared that the defense of the law was “a physical, psychological and affective test”.
Despite everything, the first gay wedding in France it was celebrated on May 29, 2013. Since then, 70,000 same-sex couples have said “Yes” to the authorities. “History has proved us right,” said Vincent Autin, the protagonist of that first marriage with Bruno Boileau. The couple ended up divorcing in 2020, “as can happen to any couple. This has also been progress and means that we are all equal, ”Autin declared on France Info radio. However, homophobia continues and discrimination and aggression continue to be “omnipresent”, he stressed.
Education Minister Pap Ndiaye announced in February the launch of an awareness campaign against homophobia at school, after the suicide of Lucas, a 13-year-old gay teenager.
