French Muslim registrar sent to court for refusing to perform gay ‘marriage’
A public prosecutor in Marseille, the main city on
the south coast of France, has demanded a 1,500-euro fine (about 1,680 dollars)
and a suspended prison sentence of three months against a deputy mayor in
charge of marriage celebrations who used a "stratagem" in order to
avoid registering a same-sex "marriage."
Sabrina Hout was sued by a lesbian couple
complaining that they had been discriminated against on the grounds of
"sexual orientation." Hout is of North African origin and Islamic
background.
The intended "marriage" was between two
native Frenchwomen, Claude and Hélène, who wanted their union to be registered
in the 8th sector of Marseille, in the northern neighborhood where they live
and work and where the population is now mainly of Islamic descent. The
ceremony took place on the 16th of August, 2014, more than a year after
same-sex "marriage" was made legal in France.
Hout was the "civil officer" in charge.
She signed the register as well as the official family record book for the
couple beforehand – this constitutes a forgery – and then slipped out of the
room, leaving another council member who did not have the capacity to register
civil marriages to lead the celebration.
The circumstances soon became known to the press,
and there was uproar over Hout's refusal to celebrate a same-sex
"marriage," apparently for religious reasons. She gave contradictory
accounts of the event, but she said at one point that her brothers had
pressured her into it. "If you perform those marriages, you'll go to
hell," they told her. She later said she never refused to celebrate the
wedding for religious reasons, explaining that she "suddenly felt
ill" on that day, even though she went through four other celebrations on
the same day. She received an official reprimand, and a public complaint was
lodged, but in the first instance the public prosecutor was content to leave it
at that.
Angry at what had happened, the lesbian couple
decided to sue on their own behalf. At the hearing in Marseille, on Tuesday,
Hout admitted that she had "reservations" about same-sex
"marriage" at the time of the wedding: "I was undecided, it was
so new. I had to think about it."
