Vive la France!

It is worth noting that the attempt, in the celebrated Bègles case, to get SSM introduced by the courts on equality grounds was an utter failure. It was rejected by the TGI (court of first instance), by the Court of Appeal in Bordeaux, by the Court of Cassation and by the Constitutional Council.

The constitutional Council found, “Considering, on the other hand, that Article 6 of the Declaration of 1789 provides that the law “must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes”; that the principle of equality does not prevent the legislator from settling different situations in different ways, or from derogating from equality for the general interest, provided that in either case the difference in treatment that results is in direct relationship with the subject of the law established thereby; that by maintaining the principle according to which marriage is the union of a man and a woman, the legislator has, in exercising its competence under Article 34 of the Constitution [power to legislate], deemed that the difference of situation between couples of the same sex and those composed of a man and a woman can justify a difference in treatment with regard to the rules regarding the right to a family; that it is not for the Constitutional Council to substitute its judgment for that of the legislator regarding the consideration of this difference of situation…” [Décision n° 2010-92 QPC du 28 janvier 2011],

Every court dealing with the case found “This was differential legal treatment because their situation was not analogous.”

Tito,

Thanks for the clips.
Hope springs eternal.
Nice job.

Thank you.

Tito,

Have to admit I can’t agree. There’s that old saw about a silk purse and a sow’s ear.

The Germans in Don’s Casablanca clip are singing Die Wacht am Rhine. It actually wasn’t a Nazi song. The Germans in the scene are singing it to antagonize the French as it originated in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, after the German victory. It became very popular in Germany during WWI, and the French certainly had reason to hate it.

Even so, word change or not, La Marseillaise isn’t a hymn of freedom. It’s drenched in blood – primarily Catholic blood. It was used as the revolutionary anthem right alongside The Internationale, which can be pretty snappy itself, in 1917 Russia.

Lazlo and Ilse can belt it all they want. Afraid I would’ve sat behind Sam and hummed The Star-Spangled Banner.

Elaine Krewer

You are right that civil unions [Le pacte civil de solidarité (PACS)], introduced in 2000, have proved very popular in France. In 2010, there were approximately 250,000 weddings and 200,000 PACSs in Metropolitan France, as against 300,000 weddings in the year before their introduction. About 93% of PACSs are between opposite-sex couples, so they have definitely not been seen as “marriage-lite for gays.”

Thus, marriage is seen as child-centred, for the principle difference between marriage on the one hand and PACSs and unregulated cohabitation on the other is Art 312 of the Code Civil, “The child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for father.” By the same token, joint adoption is limited to married couples, assisted fertility is available only to treat a pathological conditions and so is not available to same-sex couples and surrogate gestation is disallowed under Art 1128 of the Code Civil, “Only things in commerce can be the subject of an agreement.” A child cannot be the subject-matter of a contract.

In 2006, both the National Assembly and large sections of the secular press welcomed Archbishop of Paris André Vingt-Trois’s statement, “Even though it has not taken the modern form familiar in our civil legislation, there has always been a means of handing things down from generation to generation, which is the very basis of continuity and stability in a society. This transmission between generations is primarily effected by the family. It is the legal framework of family life that structures the transmission of life and shapes the future of society.”

Yes. Vive la France!