Cardinal urges French Catholics to resist plans to legalise gay marriage

By Tom Heneghan in Paris
Published on 04/11/2012 00:00

FRANCE’S leading Roman Catholic clergyman yesterday said a government plan to legalise same-sex marriage would profoundly affect the equilibrium of French society, calling it a reform for the few not the many.

Speaking in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, Paris cardinal André Vingt-Trois urged Catholics to show their opposition to a planned marriage 
reform by writing and speaking to their elected officials and through other “democratic means of expression”.

His call to action, announced at an annual plenary meeting of France’s Catholic bishops, came as president François Hollande’s govern-ment prepared to present its draft bill on gay marriage in cabinet on Wednesday.

French faith leaders – mostly Catholic, but also Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and Orthodox Christian – and conservative politicians have mobilised against the plan, especially against its provision to allow gay couples to adopt children.

“The presidential and legislative elections [earlier this year] did not give them carte blanche, especially not for 
reforms that very profoundly affect the equilibrium of our society,” said Vingt-Trois, who called the planned reform “a fraud”.

“It will not be ‘marriage for all’,” he said, citing the slogan of the pro-reform campaign, “it will be the marriage of a few imposed on all.”

Opinion polls say voter support for same-sex matrimony has slipped to under 60 per cent, and to under 50 per cent for gay adoption, as the opposition has ratcheted up its campaign since last summer.

A survey published by Le Parisien newspaper yesterday said this was the first fall in support after a decade of
rising acceptance for the two reforms.

Lay Catholic groups organised protests in 75 cities around France last month and plan more in mid-November. The Church could organise a large demonstration but is wary of adopting too prominent a role in an emotional 
political debate.

Some conservative politicians have spoken out in
favour of a street protest in Paris and some mayors, the 
officials who celebrate civil marriages, have said they would not preside over ceremonies for gays. Addressing parliamentarians, the cardinal said they should be able to vote on the law according to their consciences. “We appeal to their sense of the common good, which cannot be reduced to the sum of particular interests,” he said.

Vingt-Trois accused the government of trying to rush through the marriage reform without a debate in French soc­iety about its implications, especially for children who would grow up without an identified mother and father.

“Has it asked citizens if they agreed to no longer be the 
father or mother of their child, but an undifferentiated ‘parent A’ or ‘parent B’?” he asked, 
ref­erring to plans to make 
references to parents gender-
neutral on birth certificates.

Reacting to criticism, the government has scheduled longer parliamen­tary hearings on the bill than first planned, but it still aims to pass the reform by mid-2013.

Churchgoers are now a 
single-digit minority in France.