Ten years ago, to the day, on April 23, 2013, the French parliament adopted the law on marriage for all. Law which has since allowed some 70,000 couples to say yes. The decryption of sociologist Jean Viard.
franceinfo has been telling you about it since the beginning of this weekend, 10 years ago, to the day, on April 23, 2013, the French parliament passed the law on same-sex marriage law. A law promulgated on May 17, 2013. France, when it comes to these intimate subjects, is often struggling on these social issues. Insight and analysis with sociologist Jean Viard.
franceinfo: Has marriage for all been a major change for our society?
John Viard: First in France, it was a huge conflict, whereas around us, for example in Belgium, it went quite like a letter in the post. So that means that France, when it comes to evolving, still has immense difficulties. It may apply to other subjects. We are in a period where the intimate becomes at the center of the social fact: private life, sexual orientations, but this is also true for the debate on #metoo, etc. Previous generations were much more politically inclined, revolution, capital/labour, Marxism, etc.
We are in an intimate sphere and in an intimate era, it becomes the heart of public debate. I think it’s a liberation of the individual, it shows that we are more and more autonomous individuals, not belonging to our families. We are not primarily a lineage. We are first of all an actor in a society, which has multiplied its meetings, its loves, etc. All that is a society built around the individual, with suddenly the growing intimacy, which sometimes even invades the political sphere, to the point that we can no longer really talk about politics with the fact that France, indeed, has difficulty on all these subjects. Look at the debate on the end of life in France, everything related to intimacy in France, is still the subject of a huge blockage, and I believe that it is a real problem.
Afterwards, a second question is that we always confuse sexual orientation and perversion. And so indeed, we hear homosexuality, pedophilia, etc. homophobic discourse, as if the freedom of sexual orientation necessarily referred to this question. Which brings us back to the question of the child, because one of the great debates on marriage for all was indeed yes, okay, but after, children, after, adoptions, after surrogacy, etc. As if indeed there was a particular problem, which history does not show, because there have always been couples, especially women, but not only, who actually had children in one way or another. ‘another one. I believe that on all these levels, the more we move towards an intimate society, the more medicine enters into these processes. It is a transformation.
Afterwards, I think it should always be said that what counts is that the adventure of having a child is an absolutely brilliant adventure, and that therefore, basically, that is what is fighting , and that indeed, the way in which the child was conceived does not have a major stake. I put aside the question of management for others, surrogacy, which is actually a problem of using the body of the other, it refers to something else. It would be a debate already, I think completely different.
François Hollande was right about marriage for all. This is what Gérald Darmanin said on France Info two days ago, he was opposed precisely in 2013 to the Taubira law. And there was all this opposition in the street that we heard. In 10 years, have these debates calmed down, has a common reality gradually settled in?
Yes, I think so, on the one hand, because we realized that I was going to say: it was not so serious. And on the other hand, because we are all evolving: the number of religious practices is decreasing, we are in the process of leaving all the traditional frameworks of our societies; in 10 years, we have all changed a lot. There may also be political opportunities for some, but fundamentally, I do not believe. It also shows us one thing, and that is that France is a country that is finding it extremely difficult to reform itself. And when you do a reform, there is often a huge fight. And then afterwards you say to yourself: but after all, it was not so serious.
And when we look over 10 years, the number of marriages of same-sex couples is generally stable, around 7000 per year. That of heterosexual couples has been steadily declining overall, even since the 1970s?
What must be said is that the couples have completely changed. 63% of babies are born out of wedlock. The straight couple is no longer the couple of our grandparents. One out of two marriages breaks down in Ile de France before five years. The wedding has become a party. It’s no longer a lifelong commitment to co-managing groceries or family. And so there, we have a relationship between the birth rate, the couple, etc. which is built on the individual, which is no longer built on marriage. And so, in a way, from that moment on, the issue of marriage completely changed since the issue of marriage was procreation.
Procreation has escaped from marriage, so to speak, and so marriage, basically, has become a desire to show off in society, to have rights too, inheritance rights, account rights. common, heaps of rights that are linked to that. And I draw the attention of people who listen to us and read us on an important thing: there is only the marriage which allows the reversion of pensions. In this period of debate on pensions, we must remember this every day.