With 14 countries of the world (including South Africa, the only country in Africa so far) having now voted to legalize
gay marriage, we can see a new trend
developing in the world. We have seen it coming of course, for some
time, but now it appears that gays
and lesbians are aggressively pushing for a
new world order in which the traditional and normal view of marriage is severely challenged. It is
truly amazing to see how such
a minority group can have such a pervasive influence
in the world. The ‘gay agenda’ is also rapidly becoming one of the most
divisive issues in the world. Many are thankfully
resisting this trend, and rightly so. This is not simply a human rights issue. It is a moral issue and above all a spiritual issue. Christians must be careful to handle this matter with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and not belligerently as some are inclined to be.
Below
is an article concerning recent reaction to the legalizing of gay marriage in France. We ought to read
this with great and prayerful interest. Take note also how the media play a significant role in terms of
representing the gay agenda and
misrepresenting the traditional view of
marriage.
Joachim
Rieck
May 2013
Why France's gay marriage debate has started to look
like a revolution - The bitter battle
over gay marriage is a symptom of a broken political system - John Laughland- 27 April 2013
Paris: Revolutions
are often sparked by an unexpected shock to an already weakened regime. As
commentators in France remark not only on the crisis engulfing François
Hollande’s government but also on the apparent death-rattle of the country’s
entire political system, it could be that his flagship policy of legalising gay
marriage — or rather, the gigantic public reaction against it, unique in Europe
— will be the last straw that breaks the Fifth -Republic’s back.
Opposition
to the bill has electrified the middle classes, the young and much of
provincial France. On Sunday 24 March, in the freezing cold, the 4km stretch
from the Arche de la Défense to the Arc de Triomphe was full of people
protesting against the bill. On 13 January, also chilly, the Champ de Mars was
similarly crammed. When Johnny Hallyday or the World Cup got crowds like that,
people talked of two million. But the police, evidently acting under political
orders, have claimed that both demonstrations — which are without doubt the
largest public movements in French history — garnered a few hundred thousand at
most. Credible accusations surfaced in Le Figaro on Monday night that
the film taken from police helicopters on 24 March and released by the
Prefecture has been manipulated to reduce the apparent numbers of demonstrators.
Such
lies are the sign of a rotten regime. Outbursts such as that of Elie Peillon,
the son of the Minister of Education, who on 13 January tweeted that ‘those
gits’ demonstrating should be publicly hanged, make Marie-Antoinette’s seem
delicate by comparison. Had the mobilisation in Paris taken place in Tahrir
Square, the world’s media would be unanimous that a ‘French spring’ was about
to sweep away an outdated power structure, especially since the demonstrations
(including the daily ones held throughout last week, which culminated in a
massive impromptu rally of 270,000 people on Sunday afternoon) are attended by
an overwhelming number of people in their late teens and early twenties.
By
the same token, had the Moscow security forces tear-gassed children and mothers
— as the CRS did on the Champs Elysées on 24 March — or had they dragged away
by their necks youngsters who were peacefully sitting on the lawn after the
demo — as the riot police did on the night of 18 April — then the worldwide
moral policemen on CNN would be frantically firing their rhetorical revolvers.
Such repression would be interpreted as a sign that the regime was desperate.
Indeed, had the Ukrainian police removed the ‘tent village’ which formed in
central Kiev at the time of the Orange Revolution in 2004 — as the Paris police
bundled more than 60 anti-gay marriage campers into detention on the night of
14 April — then one suspects that Nato tanks would have rolled over the Dnieper
to their rescue. A dozen people were even booked by the police for wearing
anti-gay-marriage T-shirts in the Luxembourg gardens, where they were having a
picnic, on the grounds that this constituted an unauthorised political
assembly.
The
government may have rushed the gay marriage law through parliament on Tuesday
to try to take the wind out of the sails of this mass movement, but police
paranoia of this kind is surely a sign that the French political system is
terminally sick. The historical background certainly confirms this. For more
than 30 years, every French government has lost every election. With a single
exception, you have to be over 50 today to have voted in the last election, in
1978, when the incumbent majority held on to power: Nicolas Sarkozy managed to
get a conservative majority re-elected in 2007 only because he profiled
himself, dishonestly, as a new broom and as a rebel against the roi fainéant,
his former mentor Jacques Chirac. Add to this the fact that in 2005 the
referendum on the European constitution produced a ‘no ‘vote — that is, a
disavowal of the entire political establishment — and you are confronted with a
bitter reality: the French electorate hates its politicians and takes every
chance to vote against them.
François
Hollande’s election last May was therefore not a victory but only his
predecessor’s defeat. He was elected with 48 per cent of the votes, if you
include spoilt and invalid ballots, and 39 per cent of the registered voters.
His election was especially unimpressive considering the widespread revulsion
at Sarkozy’s personal bling and at his betrayal of his own voters. But even so,
Hollande’s catastrophic poll rating has broken all records. When in March he
became the most unpopular president after ten months in office, his rating
stood at 31 per cent. Now it is 26 per cent.
The
immediate cause of the crisis lies in the dramatic alienation of sections of
the electorate who voted for Hollande in May. The overseas populations of the
Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, and regions like Brittany where the left is as
deeply entrenched as in Scotland, are in revolt over gay marriage: the largest
French daily, Ouest-France, based in Rennes, has turned against Hollande
on the issue. In addition, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the crypto-communist who ensured
Hollande’s election by throwing his support behind him immediately after the
first round last May, has now violently abandoned him, albeit over economic policy.
But
the deeper explanation for the strength of feeling lies in the fact that, in
French law, marriage is indissociable from the right to start a family. There
is currently no gay adoption in France and no access for gays or lesbians to
medically assisted procreation. These have been legalised to general
indifference in Britain, but they are regarded as unacceptable by many in
France and as an intolerable attack on the rights of the child. The marches
against gay marriage are therefore really marches in favour of the traditional
family — and in favour of that ‘normality’ which Hollande promised to bring to
presidency but which he has betrayed in favour of the interests of a tiny
minority. (Sunday’s demonstration in favour of gay marriage at the Bastille
garnered but a few thousand militants.) Even Le Monde admits that
normally unpolitical people have been politicised by this issue, to their own
and everyone else’s surprise. The 50 per cent of French people polled who
say they are in favour of gay marriage evidently do not know what is in the new
law, because 56 to 58 per cent say they oppose gay adoption..
The
issue, in other words, has touched a nerve in France, a country divided between
a globalist elite and a conservative nation, part of which still believes in
the family and the state. Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s philandering while head of
the IMF revolted many French people precisely because such behaviour seemed to
embody the deep link between international economic liberalism and moral
collapse. Hollande’s economic orthodoxy (austerity to save the euro) coupled
with his support for gay marriage seems but a softer version of the same
phenomenon — as does the recent and severely damaging revelation that the
former Budget Minister had a secret bank account in Switzerland (and then lied
about it).
The
disillusionment with Hollande is also acute because this ‘socialist’ President
is such an obvious copy of his ‘conservative’ predecessor (just as all
presidents since Giscard have been carbon copies of him). Hollande, who
campaigned against austerity before the election only to introduce it
immediately after, recalls Sarkozy, who was elected with the votes of the
radical right only to appoint prominent leftists as ministers in his Blairite
‘big tent’ government. The military adventure in Mali is Hollande’s Libya.
This
similarity between the two men throws into the sharpest possible light the
systemic crisis of which the endless changes of governmental majority are the
symptom: France, like the rest of Europe and much of the industrial world, is
governed by one single political superclass which straddles not only
nation-states but also left and right. EU politicians spend more time seeing
each other than their own voters, while the range of policies actually at stake
at any election narrows with each one. This is why voters systematically reject
their leaders, and this is why the young have been so massively present in the
marches. Such a situation cannot last.
John
Laughland is Director of Studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation
in Paris.
This article first
appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 27 April 2013
