FRANCE: Anti-gay marriage marchers flood Paris roads

Tens of thousands of people are demonstrating in Paris against the planned legalisation of same-sex marriage in France .

Police said they were expecting about 300,000 people to march in Sunday's protest towards the Eiffel Tower from three different points in the city, raising fears of traffic jams and the closing of subway stations for hours.

Protest anti-gay marriage, Paris

The protest is the first mass demonstration in Paris since Francois Hollande, France's president, took office.

With backing from the Catholic hierarchy, lay activists have mobilised a hybrid coalition of church-going families, political conservatives, Muslims, evangelicals and even homosexuals opposed to gay marriage for the show of force.

So many protesters are expected to converge on Paris from around France that police had organisers split it into three separate columns starting from different points around the city and meeting in the Champ de Mars park at the Eiffel Tower.

Frigide Barjot, an eccentric comedian leading the so-called "Demo for All", insists the protest is pro-marriage rather than anti-gay.

"We're all born of a man and a woman, but the law will say the opposite tomorrow," she said last week. "It will say a child is born of a man and a man."

Public mood

Hollande, who promised to legalise gay marriage and adoption during his election campaign last year, has a comfortable parliamentary majority to pass the law by June as planned.

But his poor handling of other promises, such as a 75 percent tax on the rich that was ruled unconstitutional or his faltering struggle against rising unemployment, has soured the public mood. A mass street protest can hardly help his image.

      

Same-sex nuptials are already legal in 11 countries including Belgium, Portugal, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Norway and South Africa, as well as nine US states.

Gay marriage opponents such as Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, head of the Catholic Church in France, have asked why Hollande is pushing through a divisive social reform called "marriage for all" when voters seem more concerned about "jobs for all".

Vingt-Trois spearheaded the opposition with a critical sermon in August. Other faith leaders - Muslim, Jewish, Protestant and Orthodox Christian - soon spoke out, too.

Avoiding religious arguments that could put off the secular French, they struck a chord with voters by stressing problems they saw emerging from same-sex marriage rather than letting the government shape the debate as an issue of equal rights only.

Opinion polls show reform zeal cooled somewhat once these arguments were heard. Support for gay nuptials has slipped about 10 points to under 55 percent and fewer than half the French now want gays to have adoption rights.