Who's afraid of the Solidarity Pact?
France The issue of registered partnerships has been inflaming French public opinion. Christophe Marca The issue brings other debates in its wake: over the various types of family life which now characterise French society, over sexual identities and rights to parenthood. French legislators have repeatedly tried to exclude these fundamental issues from the debate, flow back into the discussion as quickly as they are flushed out of it.
Articles and opportunistic stands on "civil solidarity pacts" (known by their French acronym, PACS) have been multiplying in the press. Every possible argument and its opposite have been put forward. It seems that people can say anything, given how unused people are to fundamental discussions on moral issues in politics and the media.
There is much at stake for society with the recognition of same-sex couples or relationships. It is far from being a marginal discussion. It is time to think about the basic issues at stake calmly and in depth. Why recognise same-sex relationships?
Creating a legal status for same-sex couples has been one of the recurrent slogans of the last few Lesbian and Gay Pride marches. The outside world's reaction to the "weird and wonderful world of lesbians and gays" has been full of doubt: Why do these people insist on being recognised, legalised and legislated about? Have these troublemakers of the moral order given up their subversive duty in order to throw themselves heart and soul into the sweet comfort of normality?
These insidious questions, besides hiding a certain stigmatisation of lesbians and gays, ignore the realities behind demands for legal recognition of samesex relationships.
These realities are very concrete, and highlighted by fifteen years of struggle against AIDS. In a time of epidemics, legal non-recognition of same-sex couples leads to human tragedies and insane legal tangles. It undermines people's already fragile states of health and social positions.
Sometimes a partner returns to the apartment he or she had shared for years with a recently deceased friend to find their home locked and sealed: the family
LESBIANEN
that had long ago rejected its "depraved" child has rushed off from the funeral to claim the property. Too often when the partner who signed the lease for an apartment dies, the other is thrown out into the street.
As recently as 17 December 1997, a French Court rejected the appeal of a
"СербітьМ ув0"
COCORICO
BOUGE SA DOUG
FRANO
EM
METE
LE man who asked to have a lease put in his name after his companion's death. The court motivated its rejection by explaining that "cohabitation can only result from a stable, continuous relationship that has the appearance of marriage, which therefore must be between a man and a woman".
International Viewpoint #308 February 1999 21
"Gay Marriage?"
Homophobia
Many lesbian and gay couples, whether either partner has AIDS or not, have come to find the legal no-man'sland they are living in revolting and intolerable. Same-sex partners simply do not exist in the eyes of the law, and are therefore at the mercy of whoever they deal with. For example, some insurance companies recognise same-sex couples, but others refuse, shamelessly discriminating between unmarried gay and
Apart from the feelings of injustice that such discrimination can give rise to, not recognising same-sex couples in a time of AIDS can be dangerous or even
In 1995 the first grassroots anti-AIDS organisation in France (AIDES) pointed out that "social discrimination undermines the effectiveness of prevention programmes, and the lack of any legal status for same-sex couples leads to legal vulnerability and insecurity for these couples without rights".
The need to create a legal status open to same-sex couples results from a whole set of very concrete problems. But the demand for recognition is also motivated by the reality of homophobia. 22 International Viewpoint #308 February 1999
Discriminatory laws that keep lesbians and gays second-class citizens saddle them with a "shady" image. This homophobes' phantasms and popular prejudice. Discrimination helps justify rejection.
Lesbians and gays forcefully demand their rights, but also legitimation and recognition. This is a demand for dignity, but also for help in influencing their families, neighbours and public opinion.
Demanding full equality should not be confused with a desire to live "like everyone else" or to be squeezed into a single, normative mould. The model of the bourgeois straight couple - that twoheaded oppressive monster - is not appealing to many people.
Choosing to live in a couple does not automatically mean wanting to fit into a single model. A two-person sexual relationship can involve very different modes of functioning: sexually open or closed, a common cocoon or autonomous, intense social lives.
The demand of equal rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and straights must be understood as meaning that twoperson sexual relationships, whatever the partners' biological sex, should be considered not as identical but as equal. This brings us to the heart of the problem. This is what the moral majority has a hard time swallowing.
But one thing is certain: for several years now lesbians and gays have refused to content themselves with the mere condescending tolerance that society deigns to grant them. Seven years of struggle
In 1991 a collective was founded and drew up the first proposal for a legal status for unmarried couples. A bill was drafted and endorsed by several Socialist Party MPs, but was never introduced.
But one element of the project passed the National Assembly (lower house of parliament) in 1992: It became possible for someone to be added to his or her same-sex partner's health insurance.
In 1995, after three years of standstill, the pace began to pick up. That year's Lesbian and Gay Pride march was a historic success in Paris as well as the provinces. More than 60,000 people marched in the capital, a total that would only grow in each successive year.
Lesbians and gays were no longer in hiding. They were making noise and making demands. The militant lesbian/ gay/bisexual movement was taking on a
new vigour. In daily, private and work life, everyday high-handedness became
"Little" examples of legal discrimination gave rise to major demanded what they considered to be their rights and went to court: For example, a lesbian whose partner had been killed by a hit-and-run driver sued for damages and interest. On 25 July 1995 the court ruled in her favour. For the first time in France, the judicial system had recognised a same-sex couple. The case had major reper-
The debate on legal recognition of lesbian and gay couples intensified towards the end of the year, when leftwing mayors decided to grant certificates of life partnership or cohabitation to same-sex couples. But these certificates gave no legal entitlements. They made it possible to receive certain benefits only if a landlord, employer or insurance company accepted its validity. Arbitrariness remained the order of the day.
During the campaign for the 1997 parliamentary elections, creation of a status for unmarried couples was one of the Socialist Party's major promises.
On 9 October 1998 the PACS (civil solidarity pact) bill was introduced in the National Assembly. This bill was the last, 'ultra-lite' rehash of all the earlier bills. Help, PACS is coming!
MPs from the Socialist/Green/Communist majority did not think it important to come vote for their campaign promise. Right-wing MPs were present in greater numbers and had no problem in voting down without discussion a proposal they considered unconstitutional.
Stormy, deplorable debates then followed. The ultra-Catholic ultra-right itself into the fray with enthusiasm, clinging to its nauseating 'values'. In its eyes France was on the way to becoming Sodom and Gomorra. The most homophobic fantasies were voiced. The French Catholic Church denounced PACS as a "dangerous, useless law". In its eyes marriage and the heterosexual family must remain the norm, with procreation as their essential
As for the so-called "republican" (Gaullist and liberal) right, with the far-right National Front at its heels, it took advantage of the debate to reclaim turf by portraying itself as the intrepid guardian of "good old" French values (marriage and the family).
Backed by Gaullist President Jacques Chirac, it fought PACS tooth and nail with obstructive tactics: procedural fights (more than 1000 amendments), filibusters to slow down the debate, etc.
The right-wing opposition faced cowardly social democrats without either convictions nor political courage. During
Right wing deputies disrupt parlia mentary discussion on the Civic Solidarity Pact. the debates the Socialist government did not try to defend the principle of equality or the idea of recognising same-sex relationships.
It contented itself with desperately trying to reassure those to its right, crooning that it was only PACS, it wasn't marriage, it wasn't gay (because it is open to everyone), it didn't give any right to adoption, and so on and so on.
Finally after days and nights of debates in the National Assembly, a very amended version of PACS was approved
In the months to come this law will go before the very conservative Senate. France has not heard the last of the right's squalling. PACS is not marriage
PACS does not give full equality. Nonetheless this little law will make little improvements in many people's everyday lives.
Although some people call it "gay
', PACS has nothing to do with sacrosanct marriage: It does not confer certain marital rights, in particular parental rights. It is addressed to two people living together. The words "gay", "lesbian" and "same-sex" do not appear in it anywhere - in the name of a hypocritical, extremely French, republican universalism.
Even this watered-down law does include some advances. It establishes rules for inheritance, taxation, leases, work life and social insurance. Most of the rights granted only take effect after delays of 1 to 5 years. This is pure discrimination: codified suspicion against lesbian and gay people, as if they have to prove themselves.
PACS does not automatically lead to a residence permit for a French citizen's partner. Unlike marriage, it gives the foreign partner no right to apply for
### "SopsinsM увд
French nationality. Love, it seems, can only be "made in France"!
So why has this little law, which is neither revolutionary nor subversive in itself, caused such fear in the world of
In fact, behind the hostility and reservations that have been expressed, lie a single phenomenon: fear of full same-sex sexual relationships.
The attitude of the law and of most politicians towards same-sex relationships is one of tolerance. Homosexuality is no longer a crime under the law that is subject to punishment. French politicians cannot stop reassuring lesbians and gays about their good will. Even the ultraCatholic spokesperson Christine Boutin respects this ritual: "I am very fond of homosexuals. Every person is made in God's image and is entitled to respect and dignity. They are my brothers and
Many politicians are ready to make some arrangements for these nice lesbians and charming gays. But it is out of the question to recognise same-sex sexual relationships by giving them access to equal rights.
On the left, reservations about social recognition of same-sex relationships are more underhanded. They take the form of endless cant around the taboo of lesbian and gay parenting. From tolerance to recognition
Behind reasoning based on poorlydigested psychoanalytic models lies the same old problem: resistance to full and equal recognition of same-sex relationships. A major part of society is simply not ready to accept same-sex relationships as fully equal to heterosexual ones.
Bourgeois psychoanalysts, more attached to the survival of institutions than the emancipation of individuals, will explain that we must not weaken the symbolic order. They seem to forget that one of the essential goals of psychoanalysis is to loosen the grip of alienating social circumstances on individuals
The heterosexual norm and conventional gender roles (masculinity and femininity) are seen in Western societies as foundations of a natural order. And what is natural cannot be changed: It is what God wanted. Since these models are not seen as social norms, they lose their historical character and thus become as unchangeable as they are supposedly universal.
Yet the failure to distinguish between biological sex and social gender is a purely Western, very limited way of thinking. In other cultures there are many examples of recognised unions between people of the same sex.
It is time to replace the heterosexual/ homosexual dualism with a more diverse, less alienated, pluralist vision of
International Viewpoint #308 February 1999 23
The dominant Flemish Christian People's Party (CVP) continues to resist the recognition of cohabitation as an alternative to straight marriage. They still want to impose their own norms on everyone, and they think that marriage is the only truly valid form for a relationship. Legal cohabitation, even for opposite-sex couples, would undermine marriage, they argue. No one would marry any more. Public morals would wither away. The conservative proposal
The CVP has, however, conceded that same-sex couples are left out of existing arrangements and that they too have a right to legal recognition of their relationships. After all, the party doesn't want to be accused of discrimination.
A professor at the Catholic University of Leuven has elaborated a registered partnership proposal which meets all of the CVP's requirements. It would be an arrangement open only to lesbian and gay couples, not to heterosexuals. All the regulations of marriage would also apply