Vincent Autin and Bruno Boileau become first same-sex couple to marry in France
The two grooms wore matching black suits, one in a tie, one in a bowtie, and walked up the aisle holding hands to the jazz chords of Nat King Cole's L.O.V.E. When they tearfully exchanged rings to the pointedly-chosen Frank Sinatra's Love and Marriage go together like a horse and carriage, the crowd reached for the handkerchiefs.
"Now at least marriage is an option to all of us, what a historic day," sighed a drag-queen dressed as a disco nun.
After months of mass street-demonstrations that have shaken France, violent clashes between far-right groups and riot police, 172 hours of heated parliament debate and a warning of a 30% rise in homophobic acts, Vincent Autin and Bruno Boileau yesterday became the first same-sex couple to marry in France.
"Do you consent to take as your spouse....?" began the Socialist mayor Hélène Mandroux who had recieved phone-threats advising her to get "bodyguards" before the ceremony in the southern French city of Montpellier. "Yes," the two men replied and kissed to a standing ovation. Among those applauding was Autin's mother, who hadattended demonstrations with a placard round her neck reading: "Proud to have a gay son".
Moments before the grooms arrived, four or five anti gay-marriage demonstrators had tried to enter the town-hall grounds from the back, letting off a gas cannister and fire-crackers. Police frisked and searched everyone arriving at the ceremony after an anonymous phone-call to the town hall making threats.
In his wedding speech, Autin referred to Martin Luther King. "The law may not be able to make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me." Boileau added: "After the hatred, it's time to talk of love."
It had been billed as the French "wedding of the century" in a southern city which calls itself France's most gay-friendly place. When France's gay marriage and adoption law was passed 10 days ago following months of demonstrations, Autin, 40, a gay rights activist who works for the Montpellier tourist office, and Boileau, 30, a civil servant, swiftly published their banns, booked the outfits, organised the rings, the DJ, the car, the sit-down dinner and the honeymoon.
They had long planned to be the first couple to marry when France became the 14th country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage – the key social reform of the Socialist Francois Hollande's presidency.
Last September, the women's minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, on a political visit to Montpellier, had asked Autin if he wanted to be the first gay groom. He immediately called Boileau, who said yes. The couple had been living together for seven years. The proposal call, on speaker-phone in front of the minister, took 57 seconds, then Boileau went and sat in what he described as a kind of "closet" at work to take it all in. "It's bizarre when you think what the closet represents for gays," he told Liberation.
The couple met online in 2006 on a fan site dedicated to the pop singer Christophe Willem, star of the TV show La Nouvelle Star, an equivalent of Britain's Got Talent. Some of the fans on the site agreed to meet up in Paris. Autin and Boileau met and fell in love. Autin was a long-time gay rights campaigner in Montpellier. Boileau, who lived in Essonne outside Paris, had not been out with a man before.
Now that they are married, the couple would like to adopt a child. They will both change their surname to Boileau-Autin.
The standard wedding room at Montpellier's ultra-modern town hall wasn't big enough for the 200 friends and family, 300 guests from activist associations, 130 journalists from across the world and one government minister, so it took place in a larger party hall - with a ceiling fresco of fireworks and the obligatory town-hall portrait of the president in a gold frame perched on an easel.
In her wedding speech, Montpellier's mayor said the marriage marked a "historic day" in the fight against discrimination in France and for "a society without judgement or rejection." She called for an end to "so much hate, violence, division".
The couple appeared on the city hall balcony to cheers from a crowd of 200 to 300 people gathered in the street below. The mayor's office had considered staging a live transmission of the wedding on a giant screen outside, but ruled against it for security reasons. Frigide Barjot, the comedian who leads the anti-gay marriage movement, had urged militants to stay away from the wedding. "You don't protest against people who love each other - otherwise this movement becomes homophobic," she said.
Rights groups hoped the pictures of the smiling newly-weds splashed across all media would draw a line under the mass protests against same-sex marriage in France, the 9th European country to legalise it. On Sunday, more than 150,000 people marched through Paris on the last major demonstration, followed by 293 arrests after clashes between riot police and far-right groups. The anti-gay marriage protests were the biggest right-wing street demonstrations in France in decades. Tensions were exacerbated last when when a far-right essayist, Dominique Venner, shot himself dead at the alter of Paris's Notre Dame cathedral on Tuesday after leaving a blog post railing against immigration and the "vile" law legalising same-sex marriage.
Several outstanding issues, such as the right to medically assisted conception by sperm donor and parental rights for same-sex couples, have not yet been addressed by the law and remain part of rights groups' struggle for equality which is not yet over in France. One gay mayor in a Paris arrondissement likened the legalisation of same-sex marriage to women winning the right to vote in France in 1944.
Autin took his husband's hand and told him: "I only have one fear about this marriage, that our lives won't be long enough."
0 comments:
Post a Comment