The Information Mission, as the commission was called, was to propose any change to the law and to administrative practices that were necessary to better protect the rights of the child and to reflect changes in the French family. The commission’s report, the Parliamentary Report on the Family and the Rights of Children, released January 27, 2006 did acknowledge that the French family has altered significantly, becoming “more diverse and less institutionalized”, but recommended nonetheless that in the best interests of children homosexual ”˜marriage’ should remain prohibited.
The Information Mission made every effort to hear all views on the subject. It organized 14 round tables and heard 130 people from the diversity of French society. It travelled to Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada to assess the reforms that have been undertaken in other countries.
The report sets out 100 proposals that require amendments to existing statutory or regulatory provisions.
The Mission considered demands for marriage to be made available to same-sex couples, and was of the view that it “is not possible to think about marriage separately from filiation: the two questions are closely connected, in that marriage is organized around the child.” Said the report: “ Marriage is not merely the contractual recognition of the love between a couple; it is a framework that imposes rights and duties, and that is designed to provide for the care and harmonious development of the child. Foreign examples demonstrate this: countries that have made marriage available to same-sex couples have all, simultaneously or subsequently, authorized adoption by those couples and developed systems for assisted procreation or surrogate gestation, to enable those couples to have children.”
The report stated: “It would in fact be incoherent, if couples were regarded as equal, to remove the prohibition on marriage and preserve it for filiation.”
Regardless of what position one takes in this debate we can all benefit from better data on the effects of the long term challenges and benefits to children of traditional couples, single parents and same sex couples. It sounds as though the French found that the current data is inconclusive.
No John, I would suggest that the reason the French are saying no to same-sex marriage is that they finally have seen the decay and chaos that the feel-good Socialist have brought to their country. The election of a conservative President shows that even the French have limits.
H
Or maybe its the influence of the ballooning Moslem population in the country. The French don’t want anymore civil unrest from the Moslems do they? In some places sharia is already the de facto law. And isn’t it the rampant social decay and open immorality of the west that has much of the Moslem world so upset with us? Maybe the French are beginning to get their heads screwed on straight and are realizing what a travesty all of this multiculti “diversity, tolerance and progress” is for their nation and culture. But given the state of Europe these days you have to wonder if this is light at the end of the tunnel or looking down the tunnel and seeing a Moslem future.
Who would have thought you would see such wisdom coming from the French??? The key quote here is this
When gay “marriage” is legitimized by the state, the state will also seek to guarantee those couples the “right” to have children. This will make children into products to have, and products that gay couples will have the right to have. This is the primary, major reason that gay “marriage” should never, never be legitimized by government. It is also why gay “marriage” is ultimately doomed to failure (as was Soviet Communism). The question is (as it was with Soviet Communism) is how many lives must be destroyed before the “enlightened” powers-that-be realize the destruction being caused?
WHAT? In France? No kidding?
HowieG,
According to the last paragraph in the article: “The Mission is divided on this subject.” In the end they decided based on caution: “A majority of the Mission does not wish to question the fundamental principles of the law of filiation, which are based on the tripartite unit of ‘a father, a mother, a child’, citing the principle of caution.” The article does not say “Due to the clear evidence of harm to children raised by same sex couples …”
Although we re asserters base our position on scripture the secular world does not care about scripture or theology. To have a productive conversation with people in a secular context the [i]science[/i] is the basis for discussion. In fact it is the whole discussion so we must be equipped with all of the available data and we must be able to discuss the methods used to interpret the data or we can just sound off on our favorite blog.
French Socialism is completely irrelevant. Obviously political structures do not determine sexual orientation and there is nothing in the article to suggest that the Mission’s conclusion was in any way influenced by politics.
#6 John, I agree with most of what you’re saying. There is nothing new here that Bible believing people don’t know. What I’m saying is that the Socialist French Government may have discovered what we’ve believed all along: Same-sex marriage is a fraud with a destructive outcome.
By saying that they are “divided on the subject”, they are in essence trying to save face. Anything of the “Government” is always politcal. This is very different from the Bible and its Teachings, except when a political agenda is being pushed (e.g. TEc (Cult).
H
John A is current: to argue same-sex marraige in the secular realm on the basis of religion is a waste of time. In addition to effects on children, I suggest we need data on relationship stability and family violence. Also, I would differentiate “traditional couples” who marry versus those who live together without either legal or common law married status. Come to think of it, it would be interesting to study family dynamics of legal versus common law relationships.
It’s encouraging that this report would be published in France, although this isn’t exactly breaking news; the [url=http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/mission_famille_enfants.asp ]French report[/url] is dated [i]27 janvier 2006[/i], as Kendall notes. I’d be very surprised if there isn’t some dossier somewhere in l’Assemblée nationale’s files with a report from a different commission recommending exactly the opposite, though. Politicians are politicians.
See 6 and 8. The implication here is that in secular society science – indeed, science alone – has the power to determine whether homosexual marriage is a good thing or not. Unfortunately, this is troublesomely misleading. Information and data are indeed desirable for sound judgment, but (a) the data derived from social science is never to be trusted either far or absolutely because the data can never be complete; and it can never be complete or sufficient because (b) religion, emotion, tradition, fashion, and the affective side of politics has a profound and compelling control of both the data discovered and the actions to be taken from it. Consider how much of proper science itself has been in error and continues to be so. What then shall we say of social science? I offer the example on this blog of the miscontruing of diversity and its “benefits.”
The French – I am astounded as others of you are – that the issue is too complex to be adjudicated by reports, and because the traditional view of marriage has not been shown to be broken and therefore not in need of fixing. Larry
Larry,
Please forgive my lack of clarity. I never intended to imply that Science is infallible; only that science is the basis of debate in secular society! Even the so called “hard” sciences are open to interpretation. Simple things such as the properties of a new material might be uncontroversial but even things that are supposed to be objective such as the cost/performance of a new communications technology leads to years of debate. The social sciences are based on data and interpretations that are more complicated and the experimenters and interpreters are, in a sense, part of the experiment.
My point is that we must engage in the debate in terms of science. To be persuasive we must know the data and the pitfalls in the interpretations. A agree strongly with your points about the weaknesses of the social sciences but we must be armed with the data to challenge biases and faulty interpretations when they arise.
My view is that ALL data is incomplete and subject to bias but that does not mean you throw it out. Instead be aware of the limitations of the data.
John
#11. I misundestood and i stand corrected. You are quite right and we are not in disagreement at all. Larry