French President Francois Hollande’s government will introduce a bill tomorrow allowing same-sex marriage, challenging religious leaders and the main opposition party.
The proposal, one of Hollande’s campaign promises, will be debated in Parliament in January and February. It won’t include the right for same-sex married couples to adopt, according to a presidential spokesman who asked not to be named under government ground rules.
“The law will respect the notion of liberty, of equality and of secularity,” Dominique Bertinotti, the Minister for Social Affairs, Health and Family, said in Parliament.
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement party is seeking to block the bill.
France’s Catholic leader, Andre Cardinal Vingt-Trois, said in a sermon Saturday that it would be the “ultimate fraud” and that children should be “raised with a mother and a father as their reference point.”
Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders also oppose the measure.
The bill comes after a January ruling by France’s constitutional court, which stated that the parliament had the right to restrict marriage to a man and a woman.
The decision, published on the court’s Web site, said that “the different situation between a couple made up of partners of the same sex and a couple composed of a man and woman can justify a difference in treatment as to family law.”
Opponents of the bill plan rallies around the country Nov. 17.
A poll published in Le Parisien newspaper Saturday showed that 58 percent support the bill.