Ten years ago, France definitively adopted same-sex marriage, renaming ‘marriage for all’ for inclusive political marketing purposes. The adoption by the deputies came after months of fierce battles, since the reform was at the time rejected by a significant part of public opinion, organised in the La Manif Pour Tous movement. Today, many right-wing personalities have turned the page and accepted this major anthropological break.
The law was definitively adopted on 23 April 2013, under the presidency of the socialist François Hollande, after long months of media and political battle. Several large-scale demonstrations took place before the adoption of the law, proving its divisive nature and the reluctance of a significant part of French opinion. On 24 March 2013, at the height of the movement, more than a million people marched just off the Champs-Elysées, held back at the gates of Paris by the police.
With the institutionalisation of same-sex marriage—much more than just a civil union—the foundations of traditional filiation were under attack. Defenders of traditional marriage between a man and a woman vigorously warned public opinion that the text under debate would make it possible for homosexual couples to adopt children and would soon open up access to medically assisted procreation for lesbians, and surrogacy for male couples. Opponents of the reform were right in their predictions. During his first term in office, Emmanuel Macron did indeed open the Medically Assisted Procreation (MAP) to same-sex couples. Since then, surrogacy, which is still prohibited in France, has been the subject of regular media propaganda. It benefits from an obvious laxity on the part of the authorities, who circumvent the law and implicitly encourage couples to resort to it abroad—before the French law changes.
Many right-wing personalities took the floor on this occasion to express their hostility to a reform that everyone perceived as a real civilisational shift. At the time, there was a certain consensus among the various families of the Right on the subject. We thus saw personalities marching in Paris against same-sex marriage, figures who are now at the forefront of French political life: Valérie Pécresse, candidate for the Les Républicains party in the 2022 presidential elections; Éric Ciotti, leader of the Les Républicains party; Gérald Darmanin, now a member of Emmanuel Macron’s entourage as minister of the interior.
Since then, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. The law has been adopted; the first homosexual marriages have been celebrated; medically assisted procreation has been opened to them. According to BFM TV figures, in ten years, more than 70,000 same-sex couples have married, which represents just over 3% of all unions. From now on, it is therefore fashionable for yesterday’s fighters to deny their past commitments, on the grounds that ‘times have changed.’
Jean-François Copé, who at the time headed the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, the ancestor of Les Républicains, was present at all the demonstrations. Today he says: “It’s totally entered into the mores and that’s fine.” Minister Gérald Darmanin explained to the newspaper Le Point, on the occasion of the law’s anniversary, that “lack of experience” had “sometimes led him to say stupid things.” “If I had to do it all over again, I would vote for the marriage for all text,” he added to a regional press. There is something infinitely veiled in this verbal overkill intended to purify oneself of past crimes against progressive thought.
These massive reversals prove the fragility of a political class that is incapable of rooting itself in universal and timeless principles—in short, on an anthropology that should not bend to the changing vagaries of opinion. These denials of Peter, if we can use such an analogy here, show the power the dominant progressive ideology has against convictions that uphold essential areas of the human condition. It is one thing to change one’s mind on fiscal policy or labour law; it is quite another to deny the question of sexual otherness, which is the foundation of human societies.
Fortunately, other right-wing figures have remained firm in their past commitments. This is the case, for example, of Charles de Courson, a member of parliament who has made a name for himself in recent weeks by embodying the resistance against pension reform in the National Assembly. A practising Catholic, he was at the time hostile to gay marriage, preferring a simple civil union contract. “I haven’t changed,” he explained to the Journal du dimanche in March. The same is true of RN MEP Thierry Mariani and Gilbert Collard, the former honorary president of Reconquête. But staying true to one’s convictions does not necessarily entail fighting back against the law. Éric Zemmour and François-Xavier Bellamy, for example, leading figures in the French conservative camp, were interviewed in the media on the anniversary of the law’s passage. They both reaffirmed their opposition to gay marriage, but both explained that if they came to power, they would not touch the existing law. This is a quizzical form of inconsistency, one that takes no action against the galloping progress of wokeism, transgender ideology, and the dissemination in schools of a distorted vision of men, women, and sexuality. This phenomenon was encouraged by the vote for gay marriage and its acceptance as the new normal.
The abandonment of the fight against gay marriage by a whole section of the political class on the Right tells us a lot about one of the favourite weapons of progressivism in politics: creating the ineluctable. Progressives instil, in public opinion and in politicians, that societal ‘evolution’ is the step towards universal happiness that cannot be turned back. To them, there is no possibility of reversing course on this ‘progress,’ which they claim is as obvious and permanent as the arrival of running water and electricity in the households.One of the major axes of an authentic conservative policy must be to assume that what has been done can be legitimately undone in the name of the common good, proof that there is no fatality or inescapable march of progress in human history—whatever the Marxists may say.
Ten Years of Gay Marriage: How the French Right Gave Up the Fight
Ten years ago, France definitively adopted same-sex marriage, renaming ‘marriage for all’ for inclusive political marketing purposes. The adoption by the deputies came after months of fierce battles, since the reform was at the time rejected by a significant part of public opinion, organised in the La Manif Pour Tous movement. Today, many right-wing personalities have turned the page and accepted this major anthropological break.
The law was definitively adopted on 23 April 2013, under the presidency of the socialist François Hollande, after long months of media and political battle. Several large-scale demonstrations took place before the adoption of the law, proving its divisive nature and the reluctance of a significant part of French opinion. On 24 March 2013, at the height of the movement, more than a million people marched just off the Champs-Elysées, held back at the gates of Paris by the police.
With the institutionalisation of same-sex marriage—much more than just a civil union—the foundations of traditional filiation were under attack. Defenders of traditional marriage between a man and a woman vigorously warned public opinion that the text under debate would make it possible for homosexual couples to adopt children and would soon open up access to medically assisted procreation for lesbians, and surrogacy for male couples. Opponents of the reform were right in their predictions. During his first term in office, Emmanuel Macron did indeed open the Medically Assisted Procreation (MAP) to same-sex couples. Since then, surrogacy, which is still prohibited in France, has been the subject of regular media propaganda. It benefits from an obvious laxity on the part of the authorities, who circumvent the law and implicitly encourage couples to resort to it abroad—before the French law changes.
Many right-wing personalities took the floor on this occasion to express their hostility to a reform that everyone perceived as a real civilisational shift. At the time, there was a certain consensus among the various families of the Right on the subject. We thus saw personalities marching in Paris against same-sex marriage, figures who are now at the forefront of French political life: Valérie Pécresse, candidate for the Les Républicains party in the 2022 presidential elections; Éric Ciotti, leader of the Les Républicains party; Gérald Darmanin, now a member of Emmanuel Macron’s entourage as minister of the interior.
Since then, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. The law has been adopted; the first homosexual marriages have been celebrated; medically assisted procreation has been opened to them. According to BFM TV figures, in ten years, more than 70,000 same-sex couples have married, which represents just over 3% of all unions. From now on, it is therefore fashionable for yesterday’s fighters to deny their past commitments, on the grounds that ‘times have changed.’
Jean-François Copé, who at the time headed the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, the ancestor of Les Républicains, was present at all the demonstrations. Today he says: “It’s totally entered into the mores and that’s fine.” Minister Gérald Darmanin explained to the newspaper Le Point, on the occasion of the law’s anniversary, that “lack of experience” had “sometimes led him to say stupid things.” “If I had to do it all over again, I would vote for the marriage for all text,” he added to a regional press. There is something infinitely veiled in this verbal overkill intended to purify oneself of past crimes against progressive thought.
These massive reversals prove the fragility of a political class that is incapable of rooting itself in universal and timeless principles—in short, on an anthropology that should not bend to the changing vagaries of opinion. These denials of Peter, if we can use such an analogy here, show the power the dominant progressive ideology has against convictions that uphold essential areas of the human condition. It is one thing to change one’s mind on fiscal policy or labour law; it is quite another to deny the question of sexual otherness, which is the foundation of human societies.
Fortunately, other right-wing figures have remained firm in their past commitments. This is the case, for example, of Charles de Courson, a member of parliament who has made a name for himself in recent weeks by embodying the resistance against pension reform in the National Assembly. A practising Catholic, he was at the time hostile to gay marriage, preferring a simple civil union contract. “I haven’t changed,” he explained to the Journal du dimanche in March. The same is true of RN MEP Thierry Mariani and Gilbert Collard, the former honorary president of Reconquête. But staying true to one’s convictions does not necessarily entail fighting back against the law. Éric Zemmour and François-Xavier Bellamy, for example, leading figures in the French conservative camp, were interviewed in the media on the anniversary of the law’s passage. They both reaffirmed their opposition to gay marriage, but both explained that if they came to power, they would not touch the existing law. This is a quizzical form of inconsistency, one that takes no action against the galloping progress of wokeism, transgender ideology, and the dissemination in schools of a distorted vision of men, women, and sexuality. This phenomenon was encouraged by the vote for gay marriage and its acceptance as the new normal.
The abandonment of the fight against gay marriage by a whole section of the political class on the Right tells us a lot about one of the favourite weapons of progressivism in politics: creating the ineluctable. Progressives instil, in public opinion and in politicians, that societal ‘evolution’ is the step towards universal happiness that cannot be turned back. To them, there is no possibility of reversing course on this ‘progress,’ which they claim is as obvious and permanent as the arrival of running water and electricity in the households.One of the major axes of an authentic conservative policy must be to assume that what has been done can be legitimately undone in the name of the common good, proof that there is no fatality or inescapable march of progress in human history—whatever the Marxists may say.
READ NEXT
Trump Broadened the Tent; Europe Must Follow Suit
Expanding Our Reach
Christmas Market Killer Was Known to German Police, Saudi Officials