Which is strange because up until now it has been Mali, Mali, Mali, every day for the last three weeks....
"France’s gay marriage plans stir debate over parenthood" by Lori Hinnant | Associated Press, February 03, 2013
PARIS — The French are all for sex and all for family — as long as you’re having sex to create one. Anything dealing with assisted reproduction makes a sizable portion of them uncomfortable, as the president’s plans to legalize gay marriage have unexpectedly exposed.
The debate over whether society and science are overreaching when it comes to parenthood has sent thousands into the streets, turned the bridges over the Seine into billboards, and prompted charges that women’s bodies will soon be for rent in a society that still has surprisingly deep conservative roots.
President Francois Hollande’s promise to legalize gay marriage was seen as relatively uncontroversial when it first came up as a campaign pledge. Then, as the debate began recently, his justice minister quietly issued an order to grant French birth certificates for children born to surrogates abroad.
The news reopened a raw and unwelcome national debate on fertility treatments, surrogacy, and adoption....
Infuriated opponents pounced, accusing the Socialist government of underhanded tactics to transform families. Despite France’s liberal attitudes and Socialist government, the country also has strong Roman Catholic influence and prides itself on its strong support for traditional families.
When Justice Minister Christiane Taubira went before a raucous parliamentary session last week to defend her order, half the lawmakers gave her an ovation, while another sizable group tried to jeer her into silence.
‘‘You’re encouraging methods that are illegal in our country, that are an attack on human dignity,’’ Jean-Francois Cope, the opposition leader, accused her on Wednesday. ‘‘Children become objects, objects that can be bought and sold.’’
Why not just say it? We are all bought and sold in some way in this world now. The corporate system of debt slavery has replaced the hand of the white slave master.
Taubira said that no one — from the president on down — wanted French surrogate mothers.
Facing unexpected opposition to their once-popular plans to legalize gay marriage, Hollande’s Socialists in early January dropped plans to link the measure to relaxed restrictions on fertility treatments. And Taubira reiterated earlier denials of any plan to legalize surrogacy....
One 40-year-old woman, recently divorced with a young son and hopes for another, decided there was no point in waiting for the rules to change. She found a clinic in Denmark to provide fertility treatments, scheduled an initial round, and persuaded her French doctor to fudge some of the paperwork.
‘‘He said ‘it’s illegal’ and I said ‘yes, it’s illegal in France, but not abroad,’ ’’ said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. She said three rounds of treatment in Denmark will cost $7,860, not including travel expenses. And she doesn’t dare tell her family. She does not yet know if her second round of treatment in Denmark succeeded....
Surrogacy is widely reviled, even among those who want to open access to fertility treatments. The tight restrictions have sent many French abroad — single women and men, and gay and straight couples who fear their time is running out. Many go to Belgium or Spain. Fearing social stigma, few talk about it when they return home pregnant.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters on both sides have swamped the streets of Paris.
How you guys feeling about the recent French foray into Mali?
Last week, as the parliamentary debate began, opponents of gay marriage and changes to the law governing fertility treatment strung banners over the bridges that cross the Seine, including one that read ‘‘Everyone is born from a man and a woman.’’
Hollande had hoped to put off a national debate on assisted reproduction: ‘‘Had I been in favor, I would have included it in the proposed law,’’ he said in December as renegade lawmakers from his Socialist Party tried to take up the issue.
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Whatever you think of the issue there are children that nevertheless need love.
"Gay marriage opponents march
PARIS — Groups opposed to President Francois Hollande’s plans to legalize gay marriage and gay adoptions took to the streets Saturday across France. Hollande said he would enact his ‘‘marriage for everyone’’ plan, but vocal opposition has divided the country (AP)."
That also came on a Sunday.
Related:
"French OK’s gay marriage draft bill" by Maia de la Baume and Steven Erlanger | New York Times, November 08, 2012
PARIS — The French Cabinet approved a draft bill legalizing same-sex marriage Wednesday after weeks of loud opposition, especially from religious figures and the political right.
During his successful campaign for president, Francois Hollande promised to legalize same-sex marriage. On Wednesday, he said the measure represented ‘‘progress for all of society.’’ Hollande and his Socialist Party have a majority in both houses of Parliament, and the bill is expected to pass early next year....
The bill would also allow married gay couples to adopt children....
If you wanted kids.... sigh.
On Wednesday, Serge Dassault, an influential senator from the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, said the bill represented ‘‘the end of the family, the end of children’s development, the end of education.’’ He called it ‘‘an enormous danger to the nation.’’
Worse than the veil?
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The Cabinet decision came a day after Maine and Maryland became the first US states to approve same-sex marriage in a popular vote.
Also Tuesday, Spain’s highest court upheld that country’s law allowing same-sex marriage seven years after it was passed and after more than 21,000 same-sex couples had married.
If the French bill passes, France will become the 12th country, including Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, to make its marriage laws ‘‘gender neutral.’’ In Germany, registered same-sex couples have essentially the same legal rights as married heterosexual couples, but same-sex marriage is not legal.
Last month, several hundred people demonstrated against the bill in several cities across France, including Bordeaux, Strasbourg, and Lille, emphasizing their opposition to the adoption of children by gays.
The most virulent opposition has come from religious leaders....
Pooper-pumping Catholics carry very little credibility on the issue.
Gilles Bernheim, the chief rabbi of France, sent a 25-page report to the government, calling ‘‘marriage for all’’ a slogan, rather than a societal project.
‘‘There would not be courage and no glory in voting a law by using slogans more than arguments and by complying to the dominant political correctness,’’ Bernheim wrote.
A Jew is complaining about that?
Muslim, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian religious leaders have also opposed the bill.
If you are all in the same bed why are you fighting all the time?
Conservative and far-right politicians have called for street protests and asked the government to delay the bill. Marine Le Pen, who leads the far-right National Front, called for a referendum on the issue, and others said they wanted more debate.
See: French Pen Pal
One Paris official, Francois Lebel, mayor of the Eighth Arrondissement, warned that if the government broke the taboo of gay marriage, it would lead to the breaking of other taboos, like incest or polygamy, a hot topic among conservatives worried about the spread of conservative Islam in France.
In a compromise, the bill does not include state aid for artificial insemination and other forms of assisted procreation for gay couples. Such aid is available for heterosexual married couples, and some Socialist deputies have vowed to amend the text of the bill or include such aid in a follow-up bill.
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"Thousands in France protest adoption by same-sex couples" by Lori Hinnant | Associated Press, January 14, 2013
PARIS — Holding aloft ancient flags and young children, more than 300,000 people converged Sunday on the Eiffel Tower to protest the French president’s plan to legalize gay marriage and thus allow same-sex couples to adopt and conceive children.
The opposition to President Francois Hollande’s plan has underscored divisions among the secular-but-Catholic French, especially more traditional rural areas versus urban enclaves. But while polls show the majority of French still support legalizing gay marriage, that backing gets more lukewarm when children are factored in.
The protest march started at three points across Paris, filling boulevards across the city as demonstrators walked 3 miles to France’s most recognizable monument. Paris Police estimated the crowd at 340,000, making it one of the largest demonstrations in Paris since an education protest in 1984.
Are they just ignoring the financial crises protests, or.... ??
‘‘This law is going to lead to a change of civilization that we don’t want,’’ said Philippe Javaloyes, a literature teacher who bused in with 300 people from Franche Comte in the east. ‘‘We have nothing against different ways of living, but we think that a child must grow up with a mother and a father.’’
Public opposition spearheaded by religious leaders has chipped away at the popularity of Hollande’s plan in recent months. About 52 percent of French favor legalizing gay marriage, according to a survey released Sunday, down from as high as 65 percent in August.
This, the proposed austerity while continuing to service bankers and business, and the increasing military involvement in Syria and Africa.
French civil unions, allowed since 1999, are at least as popular among heterosexuals as among gay and lesbian couples. But that law has no provisions for adoption or assisted reproduction, which are at the heart of the latest debate.
Hollande’s Socialist Party has sidestepped the debate on assisted reproduction, promising to examine it in March after party members split on including it in the latest proposal. That has not assuaged the concerns of those in Sunday’s protest, however, who fear it’s only a matter of time.
‘‘They’re talking about putting into national identity cards Parent 1, Parent 2, Parent 3, Parent 4. Mom, dad and the kids are going to be wiped off the map, and that’s going to be bad for any country, any civilization,’’ said Melissa Michel, a Franco-American mother of five.
That just a mistranslation, or.... ?
Michel was among a group from the south of France on a train reserved specifically for the protest.
Support for gay marriage — and especially adoption by same-sex couples — has been particularly tenuous outside of Paris, and people from hundreds of miles from the French capital marched Sunday beneath regional flags with emblems dating to the Middle Ages, chanting ‘‘Daddy, Mommy.’’
If the French Parliament approves the plan, France would become the 12th country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, and the biggest so far in terms of economic and diplomatic influence.
Harlem Desir, the leader of Hollande’s Socialist Party, said the protest would not affect the proposal’s progress. The Socialists control Parliament, where the bill is expected to be introduced Tuesday, with a vote after public debate at the end of January.
‘‘The right to protest is protected in our country, but the Socialists are determined to give the legal right to marry and adopt to all those who love each other,’’ he said. ‘‘This is the first time in decades in our country that the right and the extreme right are coming into the streets together to deny new rights to the French.’’
French Catholic bishops and other religious leaders have strongly opposed Hollande’s proposal.
At the Vatican on Sunday, four women went topless in St. Peter’s Square to protest the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage. Police quickly took the women away.
Smells like pussy to me. I mean, is that really going to win over the faithful?
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Also related:
France to pay for all abortions
While some segments of French society oppose the right to abortion, the issue rarely makes headlines.
Seems to make it into my AmeriKan agenda-pusher all the time.
Also see: Sunday Globe Special: French Whore
Well, you gotta have the kid now.
If I didn't know any better I would swear the Globe is trying to give the regular Sunday reader (you know, the upper-incomes yuppies that travel to their ski cottages in Vermont and New Hampshire every weekend) a very stereotyped view of the world.
