Saturday, February 02, 2013

NOM losing marriage battle in France

Remember that so-called rebellion against marriage equality which took place in France? That's the large march against marriage equality held in Paris and heavily promoted by the National Organization for Marriage a few weeks ago. It's also the same march whose number of participants fluctuate from from 300,000 to 500,000 to a 1 million, depending on who was telling the story that is.

Well the French government has just sent its answer to that march:

The French National Assembly has approved the most important article of a bill to legalise same-sex marriage.

Deputies voted 249-97 in favour of redefining marriage as being an agreement between two people - not just between a man and a woman.

President Francois Hollande's Socialists and their left-wing supporters backed it, opposed by many opposition UMP and centrist MPs.

The proposals have generated protests and counter-protests for months.

Opinion polls suggest that around 55-60% of French people support gay marriage, though only about 50% approve of gay adoption.

Correspondents say the ease with which the article passed suggests the bill as a whole will pass.
Debates are expected to go on for more than a week, as MPs discuss hundreds of amendments, most of them filed by the centre-right opposition.

On the way they are expected to approve the other key measure in the bill, which would allow gay couples to adopt children.



1 comment:

bill.johnson19d@gmail.com said...

I think a large part of NOM’s involvement over there was just to set the stage for their own march here in the US. They had wall to wall coverage of the march, inflated the numbers and had Brian Brown talking about what a good experience it was, all building up to their own demonstration.

I would not be surprised at all to see them completely ignore any further developments from France, especially because they hate to report when things don’t go their way, but if they do give any coverage to positive news for marriage equality coming out of France it will likely be in context of claiming it went against what the public wanted. Because after all the only measure of public support that counts is whatever measure is most favorable for NOM.