A “kiss-in” staged by homosexual activists last Valentine’s Day at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral wasn’t enough to convince France’s highest court to let them get married.
“A ruling in the homeland of ‘égalité’ last week found the French prohibition of same-sex marriage is in accord with the French constitution, effectively ruling that there is nothing unequal about upholding the definition of marriage as between man and woman,” writes Lauren Funk from Paris.
France’s Constitutional Council ruled on a case filed by a lesbian couple who claimed that the nation’s Civil Code, which does not recognize same-sex marriages, was unconstitutional because it violated their right to lead a “normal family life.”
Last Friday, the court ruled that the law did not violate the principle of equality and that treating heterosexual couples differently than homosexual couples was justified.
France’s ‘pacte civil de solidarite’ – its version of a civil union – offered sufficient legal, financial and other benefits to enable same-sex couples to lead a “normal family life” without being legally married under the law, the French high court decreed.
Funk says legal experts believe that the latest ruling will make it difficult to appeal the ruling to the European Court of Human Rights because the decision falls within each state’s “margin of appreciation to decide upon its own family laws.”
