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| People supporting the group Act-Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) gather at the Place de la Bastille to attend a demonstration against homophobic attacks stemming from protests against France\'s planned legalization of same-sex marriage in Paris, on Sunday. (Reuters Photo/Gonzalo Fuentes) |
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Montpellier, France. When France finally holds its first gay wedding in just over a month’s time, it will be Vincent and Bruno who will be exchanging vows in Montpellier, a southern city known to homosexuals as the “French San Francisco.”
For the
French couple, it will be a legal union culminating a relationship of more than
five years.
For France,
it will be a highly mediatized symbol of changing social mores, won in the
teeth of months of fierce — and sometimes violent — opposition from
conservative groups and homophobic backlash.
Vincent
Autin, a 40-year-old gay activist and boss of a Montpellier PR firm, and Bruno,
a 29-year-old government worker who did not wish to have his last name
published, are more than conscious of the import of the upcoming ceremony.
“We will
make this wedding an occasion for everyone. It will be public, open to all
activists, to heads of French and international [gay lobby] groups, to the
press,” Vincent told AFP.
“There will
also be moments of love,” he added quickly, to reassure Bruno.
The two men
said that, as significant as the wedding would be, it was just one step towards
a bigger goal: to start a family by adopting a child.
“The law
will allow that, but we’re very aware that we won’t have the child we both want
right away. Mentalities have to change. And of course the path to adoption is
long, even for heterosexuals,” Vincent said.
Bruno,
quieter than his partner, agreed. “Everything won’t get done from one day to
the next.”
While 13
other countries have already changed laws to permit same-sex marriages,
France’s move to join them has run into determined protests.
On Sunday,
a big demonstration of conservatives was held in Paris in a last-ditch bid to
try to prevent the French parliament on Tuesday passing a bill allowing gays to
marry and adopt children.
Other
protests have taken place, including a huge rally of more than 300,000 in the
capital in March, and running street skirmishes with police last week.
Lawmakers
in parliament also nearly came to blows in a final debate of the bill.
But with
the legal change being a key manifesto pledge by President Francois Hollande,
the opposition looked certain to fail.
Montpellier’s
mayor, Helene Mandroux, from Hollande’s Socialist Party, sees the shift to gay
marriage as overdue — and a boon to her town, which was recently named by
French gay magazine Tetu as the most gay-friendly place in France.
Montpellier,
situated on the Mediterranean coast and France’s 8th--biggest city, is
sometimes known as the “French San Francisco” because of its thriving
homosexual community.
It was
partly for that reason that government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem in
September promised Mandroux that Montpellier would celebrate the country’s
first gay marriage.
The event
is likely to take place at the end of June or the beginning of July, Mandroux
said.
“Obviously,
the opponents will be there. But maybe those who say no, and who have the right
to say no, will understand that the [French] republic is more powerful than
violence,” she said.
Vincent and
Bruno said they keenly felt the vehement protests in the run-up to the gay
marriage law as attacks on themselves.
“Our
identity, our capacity to love, to raise children were being challenged,”
Vincent said.
He added
that he considered the anti-gay protesters to be standing against French principles.
“We are the
ones defending the values of the republic.
“And we are
also fighting for the children of some of these opponents who, tomorrow, will
discover they are homosexual.”
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