Marriage for all

Some recommended reading: Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. She’s done all the research on marriage that you could wish for. Nothing is new:  The story of Mr and Mrs Loving, in their day mixed marriage caused a lot of trouble!

 Tomorrow the first ever gay couple in France will officially marry. This is at the end of several months of sometimes violent protest by the anti marriage for all movement. The movement has been led by Frigide Barjot (a play on the name of Brigitte Bardot), who in my opinion often shoots herself in the foot. She said that marriage is for a man and a woman who want to make babies. Does she mean that couples who do not want children, couples who cannot have children and couples who are too old to have children, cannot marry?

Then we get on to the subject of adoption. “A child needs a Mummy and a Daddy in order to thrive properly”. In France one child in 5 is being brought up by a single parent. How do they think lone parents feel when they hear that statement? What about parents whose partener just went off. “The responsibility of a family is too much for me” (We know someone who left their wife and two children with those parting words)? Not to mention the children who end up murdered or ill treated by their step-fathers? What about the wives of Soldiers recently killed in Afghanistan and Mali; what do they make of that statement?

As I see it, any idiot can make a baby – and they often do. I’ve worked with teenagers who were well aware that they were unwanted by their parents from an early age. Only highly committed couples get the opportunity to adopt the baby or child that they really want. Children need love from consistent adults in their lives to thrive.

 I wish Vincent and Bruno all the best in their future life. If they choose to adopt, I hope that they are treated with the same fairness that any heterosexual couple could expect.