It was so large that organizers divided the protest against gay marriage into three columns with everyone merging in a park next to the Eiffel Tower. Organizers say 800,000 turned out while police put the total at a still impressive 340,000.
France’s Socialist government is planning to change the law this year.
But the demonstrators, backed by the Catholic Church and the right-wing opposition, argue it would undermine an essential building block of society.
[...]
The “Demo for all” event was being led by a charismatic comedian known as Frigide Barjot, who tweeted that the “crowd is immense” and told French TV that gay marriage “makes no sense” because a child should be born to a man and woman.
Although France allows civil unions between same-sex couples, Francois Hollande made a pledge to extend their rights part of his presidential campaign.
Centre-right UMP President Jean-Francois Cope said the rally would be a “test” for the president because there were “clearly millions of French people who are probably concerned by this reform”.
The far-right National Front is also opposed to the change, although its leader Marine Le Pen stayed away from the march, arguing the issue was a diversion by politicians from France’s real problems.
Despite the support of the Church and political right, the organisers are keen to stress their movement is non-political and non-religious, and in no way directed against homosexuals, BBC Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield reports.
An opinion poll of almost 1,000 people published by Le Nouvel Observateur newspaper at the weekend suggested that 56% supported gay marriage, while 50% disapproved of gay adoption.
The poll also said that 52% of those questioned disapproved of the Church’s stand against the legislation.
Earlier polls had indicated stronger support for the legalisation of gay marriage.
The protests come at a bad time for President Hollande who is struggling after a series of unforced errors in implementing his anti-rich, anti-business agenda.
But now as he starts 2013 and his eighth month as president, the Socialist’s clumsy handling of those promises has turned the public mood against him, created the impression among many entrepreneurs that he is anti-business and prompted smirking foreign leaders to offer refuge to French tax exiles.
Although Hollande and his parliamentary allies can look forward to a four-year run before facing re-election, those policy and PR gaffes risk hobbling him just as he embarks on what could be the decisive phase of his five-year mandate, with plans to set in motion long talked about labor, welfare and pension reforms in the euro zone’s second largest economy.
Mass protests in the streets have thwarted French presidents before, as have economic pressure and lobbying by business.
“He is struggling to explain the general sense of what he is doing. He needs to find a central message that is simple, credible and sounds like it will bring people benefits,” said veteran political communications consultant Denis Pingaud.
From the very beginning of his mandate, Hollande has had to walk a narrow political tight rope. Investors had long viewed him warily, especially since he declared a year ago that the “world of finance” was his enemy; meanwhile ordinary voters are impatient to see promised improvements in living standards.
[...]
If business feels scorned, voters, too, feel let down, by a failure to tackle a jobs crisis and by the fact that his most emblematic promise, a 75-percent tax rate on income above 1 million euros ($1.3 million), has been ruled unconstitutional.
Long in the doldrums, Hollande’s approval rating slid by a further four points in an Ifop opinion poll published this week to 37 percent. Another survey found three people in four doubt he can keep a promise to stem rising unemployment by end-2013.
The entire Euro-zone is in recession as fallout from the Greek, Spanish, and Italian debt troubles have slowed the economies of all. The unemployment rate for the EU is 11.8% — a record — and is two million higher than last year. Hollande’s policies do not promise growth on the scale he imagines, nor will his tax plans bring in the revenue he desires.
In short, the gay marriage protest is another indication that the French people have little confidence — a little liking — for Hollande and while they might like the idea of soaking the rich, they like the idea of economic growth more.
What delicious irony, the French opposing saomething like gay marriage.
It sounds like a sign that the Catholic church and right wing parties oppose gay marriage. This is such a great surprise …
No it’s not.
It’s almost not news.
Dear Progressive idiots–this is what happens when you rely on stealth, dissembling, intimidation, and courts to pursue what you wish, vice arguments based upon first principals.
If gay marriage supporters in America think they are somehow going to intimidate 7 billion people and attempt the excommunication of the entire globe from polite society–which is the m.o. used here in America– if others don’t give in, I think they overestimate their chances of success.
Let me tell you something, the current generation thinks that the attacks on gays are very very ugly. Young believers have quit their churches in droves to get away from the ugliness.
The more angry you get, the more ugly you look.
You have already lost.
Precisely why the communists started the gay-rights movement in the first place; to undermine traditional religion.
No, you egoist. It’s not about you.
Other people have lives. You seem to be missing the ability to empathize with others.
I have no idea what your gibberish response is supposed to mean, other than that you are hostile and rude.
The gay-rights movement is a communist-founded movement; that is a matter of historical record. Its objectives, freely uttered in its earlier manifestoes, were the destruction of marriage, heterosexuality, and religion.
The gay-rights movement has nothing to do with the fact of same-sex attraction, or whether or not people act on it; like all subversive movements, it was created for the purpose of building a grievance population to further political objectives.
It’s similar to the following facts:
98 percent of Catholic women of child bearing age have used birth control
More than half of church goers, even in Evangelical and other conservative churches refuse to believe such dogma as “members of other sects will go to hell” and “gays and lesbians will go to hell.” People who grew up civilized refused to believe that God is evil, vindictive and wants people like their gay friends and relatives or their other-denominational friends and relatives to suffer eternally.
You’re the outlier.
Another interesting fact is that the majority of American Catholics support the Obama administration’s attempt to standardizing health insurance so that Catholic schools have to cover hormone therapies (such as birth control pills).
Catholics supported the Administration on this issue more than the public at large did, more than evangelicals did, more than the Republican party did.
They were the ones affected by the mandate and they were the ones (by a slim majority) who wanted it.
Every time I point out that these theocratic stances are not supported by the laity only by the church hierarchy, I get lectured that this is a matter of principle not politics. Nonsense. If you want to win elections, you had better get on the side of the people.