french say NO to Homosexual marriage
FRENCH opponents of same-sex marriage and adoption have staged their first major protests, rallying more than 100,000 people nationwide as police used tear gas against counter-demonstrators in one city.
Wearing pink scarves and T-shirts and carrying pink balloons with the image of a man and woman holding two children's hands, demonstrators on Saturday marched against plans by the socialist government to legalise same-sex marriage and adoption.
Demonstrators rallied under slogans such as "Pro-marriage, not anti-gay" and "Long live the true family". And a Catholic humourist who goes by the name of "Frigide Barjot" opened the Paris protest.
"This is a great movement that is being launched," she told the crowd through a megaphone.
People rally in support of same-sex marriage during a counter-demonstration of a march against gay marriage in Toulouse, southern France.Picture: AFP
"We are born from a man and a woman. A child is the result of a man and a woman's orgasm. "The problem for us is the end of civil marriage for everyone."
Some 70,000 people joined the Paris rally, police said - though organisers put the figure at 200,000 - while more than 30,000 others held similar protests in towns around the country.
People rally in support of same-sex marriage in Toulouse. Picture: AFP
Police in the southwestern city of Toulouse used tear as against a group of several hundred activists who tried to confront the main rally of several thousand in a counter-protest.
A further 22,000 people protested in the southeastern city of Lyon, police said. Officers there detained around 40 would-be counter-demonstrators who had come to oppose the main rally.
Up to 8,000 marched in the southern city of Marseille, where they too were confronted by supporters of gay marriage.
There were other protests in the northwestern towns of Rennes and Nantes, and another in the northern town of Laon.
French President Francois Hollande's government has come under fire from Catholic groups and the right-wing opposition over the bill.
The marches came as Pope Benedict XVI called on the French church Saturday to make its voice heard on social issues.
Organisations backing the rallies included a group of homosexuals opposed to the bill called More Gay Without Marriage; a leftwing group called Left for Republican Marriage; and a French Muslim group called Sons of France.
In Paris, protesters brandished posters with slogans such as "Homo marriage is wrong, long live the true family" and "Everyone comes from a man and a woman".
Protester Beatrice Bodji said she had come because "children are taken hostage" if same-sex marriage and adoption are allowed.
