Suchergebnisse

Last spring the rights of same-sex couples gained recognition in a number of places throughout the world. In the United States, three states—Delaware, Minnesota, and Rhode Island—legalized same-sex marriage, while supreme courts in two heavyweights on the international scene, Brazil and Germany, struck down statutes discriminating against homosexuals in the name of equality under the law. All these places have quite different social structures and legal systems, yet gay marriage did not stir much controversy in any of them.

Last spring the rights of same-sex couples gained recognition in a number of places throughout the world. In the United States, three states -- Delaware, Minnesota, and Rhode Island -- legalized same-sex marriage, while supreme courts in two heavyweights on the international scene, Brazil and Germany, struck down statutes discriminating against homosexuals in the name of equality under the law. All these places have quite different social structures and legal systems, yet gay marriage did not stir much controversy in any of them. But it was different in France -- and for regrettable reasons. To be sure, on May 18 President Francois Hollande did sign a law stipulating that "marriage is a contract between two persons who are either of the same sex or of a different sex." Eleven days later, Helene Mandroux, the mayor of Montpellier, was the first public official to wed a homosexual couple. But what fears and turmoil the debate aroused! On May 21 the right-wing historian Dominique Venner (a former member of the OAS, the clandestine organization created to kill Charles de Gaulle in order avenge the loss of Algeria) committed suicide on the altar of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Venner wanted, he said, to "awaken consciences" and stir them against "the erosion of European civilization." Other opponents of the law summoned a long list of natural right and counterrevolutionary thinkers, from Thomas Aquinas to Joseph de Maistre. Then, on June 10, one anti-gay group tried to exploit the memory of the 1944 massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane, where SS soldiers slew 642 people, including many children, by setting the church in which they had found refuge on fire. At the end of the annual ceremony paying tribute to the victims of this tragedy, the cabinet minister for veterans was presented with a petition demanding that "such atrocities and violence shall never happen again. Nor should those in power ever impose unjust laws on a free people, without paying heed to the needs of the weakest members in our society, namely, children." Meanwhile, the extreme right-wing think tank Civitas (whose motto is "Neither Masonic nor secular, France is Catholic") called for "steadfast resistance to the subversive plan of this revolutionary government led by obscure forces." Why all this fuss? It isn't simply because two women wanted to get married so that one of them could adopt the ten-year-old child they had raised together for eight years. The controversy was so heated because of three developments in contemporary France that became intertwined. Adapted from the source document.