Since that first great and absolutely amazing MANIF POUR TOUS mounted by French men, women and children last January 13 to protest a proposed law to legalize 'marriage between homosexuals' through an initiative by President Francois Hollande's socialist government called 'Marriage pour tous' (marriage for everyone), I have not posted anything more about the movement which mounted another 'manif' (from 'manifestation', the French word for demonstration) on Paris last Sunday with at least as many people (400,000 is the conservative estimate). The organizers claim a million participated. When was the last big demonstration for a liberal cause that attracted such numbers?
The proposal has since been signed into law, and other large demonstrations in Paris and other French cities have taken place, but the protesters are not done fighting for their cause. The huge Sunday event in Paris was matched by events around the world led by expatriate Frenchmen and foreign supporters of the cause against homosexual 'marriage' and its corollary, adoption of children by homosexual couples.
Besides downplaying the size of the demonstrations, MSM news reports on the anti-gay 'marriage' events have taken to calling the demonstrators 'traditionalists' or 'right wing extremists', which is a kneejerk tag given to those who do not happen to share the media's liberal views. The following report also chooses to emphasize the aggressive actions of 200 out of an estimated 400,000-1 million protesters.
About 400,000 French traditionalists
take to streets to oppose new law
Huge gay marriage protest turns violent in Paris
by John Lichfield
]
PARIS, May 26 - Riot police fought running battles with hard-right protesters in the heart of Paris at the end of a mostly peaceful demonstration against gay marriage.
About 200 young people, many of them masked, pelted police lines with bottles, stones, fireworks and flares. The crowd – led bizarrely at one stage by a lone bagpiper – chased and beat up TV crews and press photographers. Police and gendarmes responded with tear gas and baton charges.
There were surreal battle scenes on the Esplanade des Invalides beside the foreign ministry as 200 gendarmes in riot gear formed into defensive squares to beat off attacks from running bands of protesters. Although a hard core of about 200 hard-right youths started the fighting, many hundreds of other, soberly dressed, middle-class protesters cheered them on.
Priests in long cassocks observed the battles without attempting to intervene. Other, more peaceful demonstrators stood in lines or circles nearby holding hands, praying and singing as tear gas and red smoke from flares swirled around them.
Earlier about 400,000 people, including many children, had defied warnings of possible far-right violence and marched in peaceful protest against France's newly enacted law permitting same-sex marriage.
Twenty members of a xenophobic far-right group, "Génération Identitaire", clambered on to the roof terrace of the headquarters of the Socialist party during the afternoon and unfurled a banner calling for the resignation of President François Hollande. They were rapidly dislodged and arrested by police.
Even before the violence broke out, the government said that there had been 96 arrests, mostly for possession of weapons.
The "marriage-for-all" law, allowing gay couples to marry in town halls and adopt children, passed its final legal and constitutional hurdles earlier this month.
The first officially recognised same-sex marriage in France will take place between two men in Montpellier on Wednesday.
The passage of the law, and warnings of possible violence, had been expected to dampen the ardour of protesters for what was billed as the "last demonstration" in a series of half a dozen large rallies that began in December. Police put the turn-out at 150,000. The organisers claimed 1,000,000. Other organisers estimated over 400,000, which seemed closest to the mark.
Same-sex marriage has provoked
the most prolonged and powerful right-wing demonstrations in France for three decades. Since the law was passed, the movement has begun to splinter into moderate and extremist wings.
One of the principal leaders of the protests, the satirist turned activist Frigide Barjot stayed away from her own demonstration after receiving a flurry of death threats from extremist homophobes who accused her of being too moderate and a government "stooge".
"Frigide was wrong not to come," said Alain, 38, a lawyer who was demonstrating with his wife and two young sons. "The threat of violence is nothing in comparison to the threat we face from this law. This is just the beginning of a programme of legislation to impose the socialist ideology of one gender and to destroy the foundations of the family."
Many of the banners and signs in the protests made similarly apocalyptic claims about the importance of the law. The largest of the marches, starting in the well-heeled 16th arrondissement of Paris, was led by a 30ft-wide banner that proclaimed: "No to a change of civilisation."
The marchers insist that the real damage will come not from gay marriage but from allowing same-sex couples to adopt.
This, they say, will trample the fundamental principle that every child should have a mother and a father. It will also, they insist, blur or destroy the concept of "filiation" or parental origins and lead to a shallow, rootless, immoral society.
As a result, many slogans appeared to complain about adoption or single-parent families as much as against gay marriage. "No, to the anonymity of origins" said one large banner held by 20 people.
The New York Times article had a very 'low key' headline in a very tendentious new report. .
Gay marriage protested in Paris
by STEVEN ERLANGER
May 26, 2013
PARIS — Thousands of French marched on Sunday, France’s Mother’s Day, to protest the recent legalization of gay marriage. Despite initial worries, the demonstration was largely peaceful, with the police estimating that about 150,000 people took part.
Separately, the French police said they were continuing to search for the man responsible for stabbing a uniformed soldier in the neck on Saturday evening, an act that may have been inspired by the murder of a British soldier last week in retaliation for Western military intervention in Muslim countries.
The anti-gay-marriage march occurred as a recent poll shows many French are losing patience with the protests against the “marriage for all” law that passed May 18. The demonstrations have broadened to include those angry at the president for his overall leadership and some far-right protesters who have been violent.
Marchers converged from three parts of Paris to the esplanade in front of the Invalides. There was a separate, smaller march by conservative Christians.
In general, the demonstrations against the law have included a combination of religious leaders and their followers, opposed to gay marriage on religious grounds, and more conservative French, many of them Roman Catholic, who believe that gay couples should have equal rights, but within an institution other than marriage.
Many also object to the new ability of gay married couples to adopt children, arguing that a child should be raised by a man and a woman.
In the prelude to the protest, on Saturday night, 59 people were arrested after chaining themselves to metal barricades on the Champs-Élysées. On Sunday, 19 demonstrators were arrested after they climbed onto the headquarters of the Socialist Party and unfurled a banner demanding that President President François Hollande resign. Police officers also seized a van with masks, banners and smoke bombs, and near the end of Sunday’s demonstration, they used tear gas to break up a gathering of some masked protesters believed to be rightists known as “ultras.”
As an indication of the confusion around the focus of Sunday’s march, the main opposition party, the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP, was split on whether to join. The party’s president, Jean-François Copé, urged participation, while other party dignitaries, like former foreign minister, Alain Juppé, urged people to remain at home.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, a Socialist, accused the UMP of “sparking tension and radicalization.”
With much advance publicity, the first gay marriage is supposed to take place Wednesday in Montpellier, sometimes called the San Francisco of France.
[The rest of the story is about the wounded soldier, which has nothing to do with the demonstration.]
The original Paris 'manif' last January:
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/05/2013 14:24]