In June 2011, the French National Assembly voted 293 to 222 against legalizing same-sex marriage. But a year later, Francois Hollande...

In the birthplace of revolution, a French Spring

by Robert Hutchinson

The establishment has been rattled by the vigour and intelligence of opposition to the new law on same-sex marriage.

The “French Spring” movement (le Printemps Français) has rattled the French political establishment – and even gay marriage advocates in faraway California. That’s because it calls into question the claim that same sex marriage is “inevitable” and opposition to it mere bigotry.

In recent months, between 400,000 and a million demonstrators of all ages have crowded the streets of Paris and other large cities in France, loudly objecting to a gay marriage law that, the demonstrators insist, enshrines the notion that mothers and fathers are “optional” for children.

The demonstrators carry signs with a striking logo: a red fist and a blue fist, signifying a man and a woman in revolt, with the tiny white hand of a child between them. Their motto, On ne lâche rien, can be roughly translated, “never give in” or “give nothing up.”

"This is not simply a law to give homosexuals the right to marry," Philippe Brillault, the mayor of Le Chesnay, a small town near Versailles, told the Los Angeles Times. “It's a new concept of the family.”

As in the United States, New Zealand and now Great Britain, political elites in France attempted to rush through a gay marriage law in early 2013 and hoped that the population would respond, in essence, with a shrug.

It was a realistic hope. The French are famously tolerant of sexual liberties and unconventional lifestyles. The funeral of former French president François Mitterrand was attended by both his wife and his longtime mistress. The current French president, the increasingly unpopular Socialist François Hollande, left the mother of his four children, Ségolène Royal, whom he never married, to live with another woman, the French journalist Valérie Trierweiler.

But something about the gay marriage law has struck millions of ordinary French people as one step too far.

For one thing, the French law, like those in Anglo countries, constitutes a radical redefinition of marriage being imposed upon a large segment of the populace without their consent.

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