ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: 82 parlementaires de droite protestent contre le mariage homosexuel
Translated Tuesday 17 January 2012, by Bill Scobleand reviewed by
In France, eighty-two parliamentarians from the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) and the Nouveau Centre (New Centre) have recently gone public with their opposition to homosexuals’ rights to marriage and adoption. According to them, this number is likely to increase.
These elected representatives signed a “manifesto in defence of the fundamental right of the child to be received and to grow up in a family constituting of a mother and a father.” The group is led by the UMP deputy Jean-Marc Nesme, who presented a similar text in 2005-2006, which at the time garnered the signatures of 174 elected officials, in order to influence the 2007 presidential campaign.
“Considering the long-term interests of the child, there is an imminent danger that, under the pretext of fighting against a so-called discrimination between adults, a new, much more real, discrimination is being created between children, between those who have the right to be raised in the presence of a mother and a father, and those who do not”, is the claim of the document’s signatories. In a strange rhetorical summersault, they go so far to claim that marriage between individuals of the same sex is an example of “communitarianism.”
Among the signatories are notably UMP members within the group Popular Right, such as Jean-Paul Garraud, Dominique Tian and Christian Vanneste, but also parliamentarians of Christian conviction such as Françoise Hostalier and Etienne Pinte, centrists including Charles de Courson, and numerous senators such as Isabelle Debré and the UMP president of the Finance Commission Philippe Marini.
Mr Sarkozy remains opposed to the opening of marriage rights to homosexuals, as he confirmed to his government on Friday, in response to a headline by Libération suggesting a shift in position by the Head of State with regard to this issue of extreme sensitivity among the political right.