Living in my little south-of-France student bubble, it’s not uncommon for huge world events such as the politics over gay marriage to completely pass me by from time to time. However, one thing that I have studied, read about in the newspaper and been quite shocked by these last few weeks in Toulouse is the controversy surrounding the ‘Mariage pour tous’ (or marriage for all) law; notably the uproar around the fact that gay couples are being considered to be given the right to adopt.

Currently in France, gay couples are not permitted to get officially married, although they are allowed to get PACSed. The PACS (pacte civile de solidarité) is a kind of halfway status between a marriage and a long term relationship, recognised by the state and available to any two people who may wish to solidify their relationship (provided they’re not family – fair enough really, incest is still not cool). This recognition by the state gives both partners more rights and responsibilities if the relationship comes to an end; more so than a break-up, less so than a divorce. People who are pacsé are no longer considered single. Visit FennellAtLaw.com today where the team of professionals will provide top notch services in such cases.

So with this in mind, you would think the subject of gay marriage wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, right? If gay people can already be pacsé, why can’t they get officially married? Same diff, non?

Well, apparently not, given all these protests kicking off round France. One of the biggest differences between being pacsé and being married is the right to adopt. That being it is impossible for pacsé couples, heterosexual or homosexual, to adopt, rendering it impossible for gay couples to start a family. Which is apparently “the way it should be” here in France. Having spoken to French people and from what I’ve read in the newspapers, gay people shouldn’t be able to have kids for one or more of these ridiculous reasons:

– it’s unnatural

– it’s detrimental to the development of the child to not have both a mother’s and a father’s influence

– it’s unfair to the child

– the child will not feel the filiation, or the natural link between parent and child

– it’s just wrong

I’ll give you a minute to try and get your head around those frankly homophobic and bizarre “excuses” against gay marriage. Now, I know there are always going to be ‘traditional’ people in the world who can’t open their mind to the inevitable change in society, but I, perhaps naively, wasn’t aware that it was such a proficient opinion with our neighbours on the continent. With gay marriage and adoption being such a new subject in France, and there being very few studies available to prove or disprove that gay couples damage their kids’ development, people are all up in arms about what they think. Before gay people were actually considered being given rights to adopt, people were very pro-gay. However, with it all now becoming a bit too much like a reality, it seems to be hitting a nerve and people are freaking out.

A couple of weekends ago, Toulouse saw one pro-gay adoption and one contre-gay adoption protest hit the streets. According to the newspapers, around 350 people turned up to support gay marriage and adoption, with somewhere between 5000-10,000 (depending on whether you listen to the police or the protest organisers) people lining the streets to protest against gay couples being able to adopt. It is so bizarre and backward to me, coming from England where gay couples have pretty much the same rights when it comes to relationships as straight couples, that the difference in the numbers of protesters in the two protests would be that vast. With the majority of people in England understanding that eventually, gay couples and straight couples will be no different from one another and that it’s just a matter of time until they’re completely equal, to live in a country where they seem to contradict themselves by saying that it’s acceptable for gay people to be in relationships, but that there is still something so wrong with the whole thing that we can’t let them loose with children of their own, is confusing, and even a bit insulting.

Sorry, France, but it’s weird and backwards and wrong to shrug your shoulders and ignore the possibility that a homosexual couple could make better parents than a completely dysfunctional and turbulent heterosexual couple. What about single parents? There is definitely a lack of a one-mum one-dad upbringing in those cases, but apparently these likelihoods are much more preferable than having two mums or two dads, oh, God forbid.

In my opinion; innocent until proven guilty. Until there is hard evidence that gay couples “damage the development of their children”, they deserve as much of a chance to raise their own family as heterosexual couples, and that should go without saying.

‘Mariage pour tous’? Oui. Yes. Of course. Homosexual or heterosexual, gay marriage or straight marriage; the rights for adoption should be the same.