A decade after France legalised same-sex marriage, it remains the law of the land – providing equal rights to thousands of people. But the debates and demonstrations surrounding the law's passage brought previously unseen levels of homophobia out into the open.
“Despite the existence of this law, LGBTQIA+ populations are still victims of a certain amount of terrible discrimination today,” says Vincent Autin, a rights activist, whose wedding was the very first one to be held after the same-sex marriage law took effect.
The National Assembly voted to legalise gay marriage on 23 April, 2013. A month later the law came into effect, and on 29 May 2013, Autin and Vincent Boileau got married in Montpellier.
Some 400 people, including 200 journalists, attended the wedding at city hall, presided by the mayor at the time, Hélène Mandroux.
“It was a symbol for journalists and for a certain number of citizens,” Autin said of his wedding. “Inaugurating a law of social progress is not something you do everyday.”
More from Autin on being the first to get married, and a decade of gay marriage, in the Spotlight on France podcast:
Country divided
The passage of the law was not a given. Then Socialist president François Hollande had campaigned on the promise of opening marriage and adoption to all couples.
His justice minister, Christiane Taubira, introduced the Mariage Pour Tous (Marriage For All) legislation in late 2012.
The issue divided the country. While lawmakers held 136.5 hours of often heated debates over several months, hundreds of thousands of people held protest marches against it.
The Manif Pour Tous (Demonstration For All) organisers, who unified opponents behind blue and pink logos with images of children, said they were not against same-sex marriage itself but against same-sex couples getting parental rights.
The protests and the debates in parliament brought out a level of homophobia that people previously kept to themselves.
Homophobic violence
Today, violence against LGBTQI+ people remains on the rise.
“We saw an explosion of attacks in France when the debates started in 2012,” Autin told RFI.
The rights group SOS homophobie recorded a spike in reports of homophobic attacks in 2013.
“This wave of LGBT-phobia that exists in France and that unfurled during all the demonstrations in opposition to the same-sex marriage law – we’ve never been able to push it back,” said Autin.
Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin said on Friday the national police recorded a 10 percent increase in crimes linked to the sexual orientation of the victim in 2022.
Police recorded a 28 percent in anti-LGBTQI+ crimes in 2021, compared to the year before.
Marriage ... and divorce
Autin and Boileau divorced in 2020 after seven years of marriage, ending a 12-year relationship.
Marriage brings about rights, including the right to divorce, “thankfully”, says Autin.
Divorce laws protect one of the two members of the couple, says lawyer Florent Berdeaux, who specialises in same-sex family law.
“As I say to my own clients, the main difference between marriage and the pacs, or civil union, is divorce.
“I see in my office people were happy to be married, just to be able to divorce properly … Divorce has a lot of civil effects that protects the one who is less wealthy,” he told RFI.
Berdeaux remembers marching in 2013 in favour of gay marriage, and he married his partner of the time, Benoit, in 2016, “not exactly the day after the law," but soon after.
"We took our own time, but we knew it was possible, which already was a huge thing.”
Caution from US
Berdeaux sees gay marriage as the law of the land today, 10 years later, though he remains cautious.
“I feel comfortable that now it's the law and we will never come back. But since we saw in the United States we could go back in time with the abortion law, we never know what will happen," he said.
“We never know who will get in office in France someday.”
Autin also points to the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, which gave a constitutional protection to terminate a pregnancy, as a cautionary tale.
Even if it would be very difficult to overturn a law that grants rights in France, “you see what is happening here and there in certain Western countries, on other subjects."
"We don’tknow what the future will be. That is why it is important to remember the history.”
More on the first same-sex marriage in France and the ten years of the law in the Spotlight on France podcast, click here.
