FRANCE: Senate Adopts Gay Marriage Bill, Homophobia Grows

The French Senate adopted the bill last night (S)

With 179 for and 157 against, France's senate decided in the late hours of Tuesday night to pass article 1 of the equality bills that are on the table at the moment.

But all has not yet been won. Same-sex couples will be able to marry as soon as this summer, but French activists know that this is only the beginning of the end of their fight for equality. The senate is yet to adopt articles on adoption, partnership laws, and once those have passed the fight will be reignited by the demand for same-sex equality when it comes to Medically Assisted Procreation (MAP).

The heated debate started on Tuesday afternoon, but only came to a close in the early hours of Wednesday morning, with the sitting finally ending near 2:30 am. The opposition has started to talk about surrogacy once more, just as they did in the National Assembly in January. The subject is constantly brought up by the right-wing politicians, despite it not actually featuring in the equality bills and the left saying they're also against it, reflecting the majority of the popular opinion on the topic.

Spokesperson for the opposition camp 'La Manif Pour Tous' (or 'The Protests For All'), Virginie Tellenne, who goes by her stage name, Frigide Barjot (or 'Frigid Looney'), says they're not to blame for the escalating homophobia in the country. All this, despite the fact that in their Parisian protest in November, they were accompanied by Civitas, a radical Christian group, often using slogans such as "France needs children, not homosexuals!", and in their most recent protest in March seemed (from insider videos) to be composed primarily of radical right-wing extremist youth groups and people calling for the resignation of President Francois Hollande, whose popularity is still in free-fall due to the financial crisis.

Meanwhile, outside the French senate, Civitas continues to pray for the protection of the institutions of marriage and the family, and hope that God will make justice minister, Christiane Taubira who's proposing the bills, suddenly decide she's homophobic. So far, the only thing to have come out of this ritual is sore knees and scary interviews.

Frigide Barjot and the other spokespeople for 'La Manif Pour Tous' are so determined to show that they're "not homophobic and just against marriage equality" that they've decided to take part in an event to denounce homophobia in France (mostly caused by them at the moment) and more specifically, the most recent victim, Dutchman Wilfred de Bruijn, who was violently beaten up in Paris where he has been living since 2003.

"Sorry to show you this. It's the face of homophobia." he wrote on his Facebook profile

Gay rights group SOS Homophobie said it has received 60 complaints of anti-gay hatred in Paris just in the past week and blamed opponents of the equality bills. The same night Wilfred was attacked, a LGBT centre in the capital was covered in anti-gay marriage posters.

Right-wing opponents are more present than ever in the opposition camp and are becoming more and more violent. The escalating homophobia in the country is being amplified even more in anti-equality protests and before the media, with the GUD, a Christian extremist right-wing youth group calling on their supporters to "beat up the homos" at this year's Gay Prides. The country is suffering a sort of "War of the Associations" with the NPA (New Anti-capitalist Party) offering to protect gay rights demonstrations and gay prides in many of the major cities.