It seems to me that there is a wee bit of resistance to French President Francois Hollande’s plans to legalize gay marriage.
First, the government re-scheduled the gay marriage vote to a different day. They were trying to avoid their own citizens’ protests against the vote. It seems that the previous marches with over a million participants got on their nerves.
I’ve seen videos and photos of the earlier marches. The marchers were moms and dads with their children, little old ladies and gray-haired priests. Their sheer numbers were impressive. But it’s even more impressive that they looked like the kind of people who form the backbone of a country. If the government is afraid of them, then it is afraid of its own middle class.
Ditto, or maybe double ditto, for the mayors. The Association of Mayors for Children has announced that, if this law passes, its 14,900 members will refuse to perform gay marriages.
I don’t want to rush to judgement here, but it’s beginning to look like the French government is running over its people with this vote. Let’s look at the situation. We have a national government that is moving votes around because it is so overwhelmed by citizen marchers against an issue. We also have a large number of local officials — people who are part of the government — flat-out saying that they will not abide by the law if it passes. Is the French government strong-arming its people with this law? It sounds that way.
I think that duly elected officials who have even half a brain would take note of this much resistance from the electorate. But then I’m assuming that these duly elected officials have half a brain. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they checked their brains to their party when they ran for office and don’t remember where they left them. I can’t think of any other reason for forcing a law this divisive on an aroused citizenry.
I am well aware that the com boxes on this blog are going to fill up with comments trying to equate gay marriage to human slavery and miscegenation, but those analogies don’t hold up. I realize why they do this. It’s because there really isn’t some innate right to gay marriage. They’re forced to link their cause to some other cause to give it legitimacy. It doesn’t stand on its own.
The reason there isn’t an innate right to gay marriage is because the concept itself is something of an oxymoron. Gay people have sex with one another and fall in love with one another. But theirs is a sterile union. For that simple reason, it serves no larger purpose to the overall society to call their pairing “marriage.”
Marriage between a man and a woman, by its very nature, produces other human beings. Marriage is the institution by which we nurture and raise our young to become stable and productive citizens who can nurture and raise the next generation after them.
The pitiful mess that heterosexuals have made of marriage these past few decades doesn’t negate that. It underscores it. Look at the messed up kids our messed up marriages are producing. We have degraded family and home life to the point that we have raised a generation of young people who appear to be unable to bond to form marriages and raise children of their own. They have never known a stable home and because of that, they can not create one for themselves.
This doesn’t mean that marriage is unimportant. It shows how drastically important it is. Nothing can replace it.
Degrading marriage further will only shove us further along in our cycle of social and cultural self-destruction.
The French people seem to understand this a lot better than the rest of the Western world. They understand that children matter.
They are trying their best to tell this to their government. Meanwhile, the government appears to have put stoppers in its ears so that it won’t have to listen. I would not be surprised if the French find themselves subjected to another lecture like that the New Zealand statesman du jour delivered to his constituents, explaining to them what an ignorant and bigoted bunch of backward hayseeds they are for thinking for themselves instead of seeing things the way their government wants them to.
It’s a mistake when elected officials start to assume that people stupid enough to elect them must be complete idiots. There is every possibility that they will discover that their election was just a momentary lapse in judgement.
From CNA:
.- A group of at least 14,900 French mayors has said it will not perform “gay marriages,” even if the government moves ahead with plans to legalize the practice.
The administration of French President Francois Hollande has put forth a measure that would legalize “gay marriage,” allow gay couples to receive medical treatment for artificial procreation and to adopt children.
“It is foolish to think that the mobilization of the elected mayors would stop if the law is passed,” said Franck Meyer, spokesman for the association Mayors for Children.
“As citizens, we elected officials will not give up,” he emphasized in statements to the media.
Meyer, who is mayor of Sotteville-sous-le-Val in northern France, observed that some of the mayors in the group have said they “would resign if the law is adopted,” while others “have said they will refuse” to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples.
On April 12, the French Senate passed the measure sponsored by President Hollande, but it has yet to go before the French National Assembly. (Read the rest here.)
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