France To Allow Gay Marriage

[Lee]

(Paris) The mayor of a small community in southwestern France announced Thursday that he will perform the country's first same-sex marriage in June.

Mayor Noel Mamere of Begles, just outside Bordeaux, identified the happy couple as two local men. Under French law, non religious weddings must be conducted by the mayor of a couple's local municipality for their union to be legal.

He said the men asked him last week to perform the ceremony this summer, after he pledged to marry any same-sex couple that asked him.

"There's nothing extraordinary about marrying two people of the same sex in the European Union, because Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands have done it already and the new Spanish prime minister...has put it in his political program," said Mamere, a member of the Green Party.

Although French law does not specifically give same-sex couples the right to marry there is nothing, Mamere said, to ban such unions.

Civil unions between same-sex partners have been legal in France since 2000, but gays say these fall short of legal marriages because they not provide most of the financial benefits of marriage and do not include adoption rights.

The marriage is expected to draw strong criticism from the Catholic Church. This summer Pope John Paul is expected to visit the area on a pilgrimage to the shrine at Lourdes.

http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/04/042204franceMarr.htm

Damn if the U.S doesnt end up doing something soon we are going to look like a third world when it comes to not discriminating against people.

Regards,

Lee

[Bec]

Damn if the U.S doesnt end up doing something soon we are going to look like a third world when it comes to not discriminating against people.

I think we already look that way ... and not just in discrimination practices but in the general way the US population is NOT provided for... ie: national healthcare coverage, $$ for schools and teachers, better $$ for those that provide emergency services and so on. The funds that went into wars could easily have gone into things WE need right here on US soil.