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The Tocqueville Connection
FRANCE USHERS IN SAME-SEX UNION, GAY RIGHTS AFTER LONG CONTROVERSY
First published Oct. 13, 1999
PARIS, Oct 13 (AFP) - France became Europe's first Roman Catholic country to recognize same-sex unions Wednesday when parliament adopted a gay rights bill after a year of bitter controversy whipped up mainly by church leaders and conservatives.
The 577-seat National Assembly, or lower house, adopted the legislation with 315 votes for, 249 against and four abstentions.
To a round of applause from Socialist, Communist and Greens backbenchers, Justice Minister Elisabeth Guigou pledged to try to bring the law into force by year's end to make up time lost in months of stormy debate and foot-dragging by the opposition, which introduced around 1,000 amendments.
Shortly before the vote, the head of the mainstream RPR opposition party's parliamentary group, Jean-Louis Debre, promised to hold up enactment by having the law reviewed by the Constitutional Council, France's legislative watchdog.
Called the Civil Solidarity Pact, but better known by its acronym PACS, the law aims to allow unmarried heterosexuals and homosexuals to register their union "in order to organise their common life."
Such couples, whatever their sex, will gain inheritance, housing and social welfare rights, as well as the right to pay joint taxes, rights which conservative groups and the country's churches have argued should be reserved to married people.
Though the terms of the legislation fall short of the demands of the homosexual lobby, Guigou told MPs that it will "offer a solution to five million people who live as couples without being married."
"The debate," she added, "has forced the retreat of homophobia."
"No one here in parliament now dares to openly declare himself a homophobe! That is both a step forward and a symbol."
But the "union" symbolically will differ from a marriage, with unmarried couples asked to register at a court rather than at a town hall, and with partners earning the right to a joint tax return only after three years of fidelity, against instant rights for traditional married couples.
There is concern too that the registration of a union could open up human rights discrimination against homosexuals by providing a nationwide list of self-avowed gays.
That concern is expected to serve as a central argument in the RPR's appeal to the Constitutional Council.
"In order to end discrimination we are about to force homosexuals to go public on their sex life. This is a breach of privacy," said Patrick Devedjian of the Gaullist RPR party.
The scheme has generated one of the stormiest parliamentary and public debates since the Socialists took office in June 1997, with conservatives and the Roman Catholic church challenging the bill as an attack on the sanctity of marriage -- and with some leftwingers also initially in opposition.
Though the government finally rallied support to the bill that aims to bring legislation in line with contemporary life styles, around half of France's 36,000 mayors, who since 1802 have officiated at weddings, had warned at the outset that they would not celebrate gay unions.
Because the fractious mayors included Socialists and Communists, the government finally was forced to propose that the PACS be signed in law courts rather than in town halls.
As for the opposition, it has somewhat softened its bitter criticism of the bill in the yearlong dispute in fear of alienating young voters.
A survey in June this year showed that 59
percent of rightwing voters aged under 30 favoured the PACS,
compared to only 24 percent among those over 60.
P991013A.HTM Oct. 13, 1999
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P991013A.HTM Oct. 13, 1999