Gay marriage ‘law will be rewritten’

THE LAW on gay marriage and adoption will be rewritten when the opposition UMP gets back into power, leader Jean-François Copé has promised.

President Hollande signed the controversial mariage pour tous bill into law on Saturday after the Conseil Constitutionnel rejected moves to strike it out but Copé’s promise to look at it again has sparked argument within his own party.

Copé said that the law was against his party’s values and said that the people would get their chance to decide at the next vote. “When we are returned to power it will be necessary to rewrite this text to protect paternity and children’s rights.”

But former Sarkozy education minister Luc Chatel said the world would have changed in four years’ time and they had already seen what had happened when the Right-wing promised to change the pacs civil union several years ago but had done nothing. He said: “I am against the law, but I do not believe that we can go back on it.”

A Copé loyalist, Patrick d’Agostino, tweeted: “After refusing to marry homosexuals it will be refusing to marry blacks, Arabs, etc. Where’s the limit?”

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, who is standing to be mayor of Paris, said the party “owes the truth to voters”. She added: “When I hear people say ‘we will overturn the law’ as if one could be unmarried or unadopted I say it’s not true.”

Elsewhere, the UMP mayor of Vienne in Isère has said he will not marry homosexuals but other leading UMP mayors, including Christian Estrosi in Nice and Hervé Mariton in Crest, Drôme, have said they will do so.

However, Christian Democrat leader Christine Boutin said the law was against her conscience and “there was a moral law superior to that of the Republic”.

Mayors who refuse to obey the law could be suspended from office by the prefect and face a €45,000 fine and three years in jail.

An opinion poll found 57% of people found that mayors were not justified in refusing to celebrate a gay marriage.

France became the 14th country to legalise gay marriage and Hollande said he had taken the decision and “now it is time to respect the law of the Republic".
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