Paris With a Parisian

A few days before the end of 1800 years of gay discrimination…

That’s it! France is about to go ahead and allow same-sex mariage. As the last debates burst out here and there, it’s time to look at the event with perspective.

Since everybody’s talking about it, I felt I had to bring my own brick to the wall of freedom and modernity. After almost two milleniums of gay terror, and a few decades of discrimination, France is about to join -late- the club of its neighbors who already allow same-sex marriage (Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, etc). This was a presidential promise by François Hollande as a candidate, and of course the consequence of a natural evolution of society. Indeed, after the worldwide disappearance of human sacrifices and of official slavery, we are witnessing that, in spite of all the ecological and economical threats above our heads, mankind is bettering itself and History is going towards more tolerence and, in one word, more intelligence.

While until 1981 Homosexuality was still an offense in Paris, today a very tiny and extreme part of the French population still think that homosexuality is a choice and/or a perversion. All polls show that the majority of people in this country back up an equal marriage for all, giving all of us the impression that we are moving toward a more modern, peaceful society. However, as usual, it’s not the masses that you hear. It’s that small extreme part of the population that takes advantage of this last debate to try to defend a society model that already started to disappear with Napoleon, over 200 years ago. And all of these backward people will be there, demostrating in the streets of the City of Lights, this coming Sunday.

For a foreigner visiting Paris this weekend, you would come across the best historical pest buffet of all times. Oui, this demostration will be incredible, in that the worse ghosts of all of France’s darkest eras will be there. First of them, Civitas, this group of extreme catholics who advocate a return to a France dominated by God. Yep, after more than a century of secularism, will still have these. Then, the Bloc Identitaire, pretty much kids who think that French must be white, straight and catholic, and ready to fight to defend that. Le Renouveau Français, who still officially prefer Pétain over de Gaulle and fight the “Homosexualist Lobby”. All of these people are fun, they are an epiphenomenon, and just owe their presence to the high level of tolerence we have for bull shit down here. Or maybe the fact the we can’t order machineguns online to shoot them as they walk.

Then you have the most dangerous group. A group of people, more important, a mass of church-goers and right-wing UMP voters, almost looking nice and genuinely concerned, who do not want same-sex marriage -I quote- for the interest of the child and the families.

And bien sûr, that is without homophobia. No, they love gay people. As long as gay people are ashamed of themselves, hidden somewhere, and far away from children. But that’s not homophobia, of course not. They are civilized.

The problem with them, is that their supposed mild attitude about it is showing results. For instance, all the Churches were sollicitated by the State to give an opinion. The Great Rabbi wrote a 20 page essay, the head of the Great Mosquée of Paris gave his directives, not to mention the constent work of the Catholic church to make the government abandonned the project. We even went all the way to the big Non Non. That is, the representatives of all churches were invited to give their opinions in… Congress! Now what part of “separation of Church and State” did we not understand? It’s a mystery to me, but same-sex marriage is a civil, political matter that is not the business of religions. Not more or less than it is the business of the Butchers Association or the Marseille Hunting Club…

And all these people keep on talking about the rights of the children, and how same-sex marriage threatens the(ir) concept of family. Well since nobody never writes it, I’ve got news about it: Gay and Lesbians have families. Not only do they not come from Mars and have parents and sibblings, but also, they already have children, to a point that several dozens of thousand families are already same-sex families. There is philosophically no opposition between family and homosexuality, and it is already done: they exist. And not recognizing the second parent is unfair, legally dangerous, and harder on the children. So if these people really wanted to fight for the children rights, they would back up same-sex marriage, so that having two mothers or two fathers would be a new normality, as it ought to be. Even straight kids have complex families. How many of us out there have a step-parent that we consider as a father or mother? Millions… And they do have the status. Why would that be different in a same-sex couple? No other reason than… Yes. Homophobia.

If you look at all the scientific facts, surveys, studies, you will not find one -oui, not one- that tends to say a same-sex household is bad for the kid. Not one. For society? Gay people didn’t wait for the law to live together, and so far there is absolutely no problem. The fact that gay households are more and more obvious will, hopefully, make homophobia decrease. Maybe, in 15 years, “faggot” will no longer be the worse insult in school.

But no, they hide it under family concerns and society anxiety, and in a nutshell,  this mass of people who will walk the streets of Paris, the only thing they don’t want, is for Gay people to be no longer different. They’re ready to offer alternatives. A new Civil Union. The exact same right than marriage, but another name. Well, that has a name too. Segregation. Two buses, same departure, same arrival, same time to go from here to there. One of the Blacks, one for the Whites. Two contracts, the same, one for the straights, one for the gays. Who the hell wants that? Not me, nor a vast majority of French people. And not the government.

Today, we end the dark ages of gay people. The time when you had to hide yourself, find an opposite sex person and raise a family, and cheat on him/her. We end the time of hypocrisy. We end the time of fear. We end the time of stigmatisation. Once there will no longer be any right differences left between straights and gays, we can hope that the surrounding homophobia will vanish, due to the discovery of a peaceful, thought-provoking, fun life together, straights and gays, in equality.

The Pope can use all his influence and his millions, the politicians can make all their little strategies to use this for their carreers, religions and extreme political parties can manipulate gullible minds as they’ve always done, it’s too late: the French public opinion was ready, is ready and will be ready for Society 2.0: the society in which you can be different and be normal. Love is the answer. It’s not just me, a guy said it 2000 years ago on the other side of the Mediterranean sea. Love. Is. The. Answer.

Frankly, what’s so hard to get about that?