Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who has embarked on a political comeback and is expected to run again for president in 2017, said Saturday that France’s marriage equality law should be scrapped.

The same-sex marriage law, which came into force in May 2013 and also legalizes gay adoption, “should be rewritten from the ground up,” Sarkozy told audience members at a debate organized by the conservative Common Sense (Sens Commun) group.

AFP reports that Sarkozy’s words were initially met with jeers and chants of “Repeal! Repeal!”, prompting the former president to add: “If you prefer that I say repeal the law… it comes down to the same thing.”

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The former president, who has been married three times, has previously criticized the law, saying it was “humiliating families and humiliating people who love the family,” but it is the first time he has called for its repeal.

After he was elected in 2007, Sarkozy promised the LGBT community he would introduce civil unions, but nothing came of it during his term. He left office in 2012.

An opinion poll published Saturday showed 68 percent of France’s citizens in favor of same-sex unions and 53 percent in favor of adoption by sam-sex couples.