French Mayor Announces Plan to Conduct First Gay Wedding

A former presidential candidate from the French Green party has said he will conduct what would be the country's first gay wedding ceremony this summer in the name of equal rights for homosexuals.

Noël Mamère said he would marry two gay men in the town hall of Bègles, the Bordeaux suburb of which he is mayor, on June 5. For their marriage to be legal, all couples in France must undergo a civil service conducted by their local mayor or his deputy.

The wedding will take place "within the conditions of, and in compliance with, the obligations of the law," Mr Mamère insisted, adding that article 144 of the French civil code did not state that a marriage could not be celebrated between between two people of the same sex.

"For me, this act is the continuation of a struggle I have fought for a long time; for equal rights and against all discrimination," he said. "Homosexuals in this country, as in many others, suffer from a great deal of discrimination. They are the last category of French people who are banned from getting married."

Neither France's traditionally powerful Roman Catholic church, which is preparing a visit from the Pope this August, nor any senior conservative politician would comment on the plan yesterday, although a habitually outspoken family values MP, Christine Boutin, described Mr Mamère as a "publicity-seeking provocateur".

Same-sex unions have been legal in France since 1999 when, after years of campaigning by gay rights groups, the previous Socialist government introduced the Pacs or pacte civile de solidarité, a legal contract meant to give cohabiting couples the same rights as husbands and wives.

The Pacs contract allows any established unmarried couple to file joint tax returns, share property rights, enjoy the same social welfare and inheritance advantages as families, and to avoid potentially insurmountable problems involving pensions, wills and life insurance if they separate or if one of the partners falls ill or dies.

But proponents of gay marriages say the existence of the Pacs alternative does not mean same-sex partners who want to get married are not being discriminated against. Nor does the Pacs union allow gay couples to adopt, or offer exactly the same fiscal advantages.

Mr Mamère said: "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 already put it in his political programme."

Several leftwing Paris mayors have also said they were prepared to celebrate gay weddings in their town halls, and a petition calling for equal rights for gay people - including the right to marry and to adopt children - recently collected the signatures of some 2,000 leading entertainers, writers and intellectuals.

Mr Mamère said the European court of human rights had recently said that the civil codes of several member states "must be adapted to the evolution of society". He said that if the June 5 marriage was subsequently declared illegal, he would take the case to the European court.