Opponents hold up marriage debate
Opposition MPs have lodged 5,360 amendments, including allowing incest and polygamy
DEBATE on the law legalising gay marriage is being bogged down by thousands of amendments – some of them ridiculous.
Opposition MPs have lodged 5,360 amendments to the bill that is being debated in parliament since yesterday.
Commentators say this is a “time-honoured” way of submerging serious debate under a deluge of votes on side issues before the final MPs’ vote on the bill, intended for February 12.
The mayor of Orange, Jacques Bompard of the far-Right party Ligue du Sud, has distinguished himself by a series of especially controversial amendments including: abolishing the age of consent and allowing incest and polygamy. He has claimed this is so as “to remove all forms of discrimination” and extend marriage to “all kinds of family”.
In another amendment he proposes abolishing civil marriage altogether in favour of religious ones.
The former special adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy, Henri Guaiano, proposes removing a clause in the bill allowing couples of different nationalities to marry even where one comes from a country that bans gay marriage. This is to avoid “an influx of foreigners wanting to come and marry in France”, he said.
A group of UMP Party MPs, including former transport minister Thierry Mariani, wants to allow marriage outside the commune of residence – a way of helping mayors who do not want gay marriage, who could suggest that couples go elsewhere.
Several other UMP members, including Hervé Marmiton and Lionnel Luca, opposed to gay couples raising children, suggest single people no longer be allowed to adopt.
Another party colleague, Jean-Frédéric Poisson, calls for a new legal principle that “the superior interest of the child is to live as a priority with their biological mother and father” as opposed to adoptive ones.
Photo: David Monniaux
