March for Marriage in Paris was so huge it shocked the organizers
PARIS, October 18, 2016 – The “Manif pour tous” has done it again. On Sunday, the French capital was once again the meeting place for tens of thousands of peaceful but determined demonstrators demanding laws that respect true marriage and ban artificial procreation, especially surrogate motherhood and in vitro fertilization for same-sex couples. To be honest, in the absence of legislative deadlines, four and a half years into François Hollande ’s presidential mandate, no one was expecting an enormous turn-out. But some 200,000 people, according to the organizers – the police only counted 24,000, something of an understatement… – marched through the wide avenues of the residential 16th arrondissement à Paris towards the Place du Trocadéro , across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower , in the still warm autumn sun. Even the organizers were taken by surprise: the venue was too small for the crowds whose steady flow kept pouring onto the square between 3 p.m. and 5.30 p.m.,