Vincent Autin and Bruno Boileau become first same-sex couple to marry in France
The two grooms wore matching black suits, one in a tie, one in a
bowtie, and walked up the aisle holding hands to the jazz chords of Nat
King Cole's L.O.V.E. When they tearfully exchanged rings to the
pointedly-chosen Frank Sinatra's Love and Marriage go together like a
horse and carriage, the crowd reached for the handkerchiefs.
"Now at least marriage is an option to all of us, what a historic day," sighed a drag-queen dressed as a disco nun.
After months of mass street-demonstrations that have shaken France, violent clashes between far-right groups and riot police, 172 hours of heated parliament debate
and a warning of a 30% rise in homophobic acts, Vincent Autin and Bruno
Boileau yesterday became the first same-sex couple to marry in France.
"Do
you consent to take as your spouse....?" began the Socialist mayor
Hélène Mandroux who had recieved phone-threats advising her to get
"bodyguards" before the ceremony in the southern French city of
Montpellier. "Yes," the two men replied and kissed to a standing
ovation. Among those applauding was Autin's mother, who hadattended
demonstrations with a placard round her neck reading: "Proud to have a
gay son".
Moments before the grooms arrived, four or five anti
gay-marriage demonstrators had tried to enter the town-hall grounds from
the back, letting off a gas cannister and fire-crackers. Police frisked
and searched everyone arriving at the ceremony after an anonymous
phone-call to the town hall making threats.
In his wedding speech,
Autin referred to Martin Luther King. "The law may not be able to make a
man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me." Boileau added:
"After the hatred, it's time to talk of love."
It had been billed
as the French "wedding of the century" in a southern city which calls
itself France's most gay-friendly place. When France's gay marriage and adoption law was passed 10 days ago following months of demonstrations, Autin, 40, a gay rights
activist who works for the Montpellier tourist office, and Boileau, 30,
a civil servant, swiftly published their banns, booked the outfits,
organised the rings, the DJ, the car, the sit-down dinner and the
honeymoon.
They had long planned to be the first couple to marry
when France became the 14th country in the world to legalise same-sex
marriage – the key social reform of the Socialist Francois Hollande's
presidency.
Last September, the women's minister Najat
Vallaud-Belkacem, on a political visit to Montpellier, had asked Autin
if he wanted to be the first gay groom. He immediately called Boileau,
who said yes. The couple had been living together for seven years. The
proposal call, on speaker-phone in front of the minister, took 57
seconds, then Boileau went and sat in what he described as a kind of
"closet" at work to take it all in. "It's bizarre when you think what
the closet represents for gays," he told Liberation.
The
couple met online in 2006 on a fan site dedicated to the pop singer
Christophe Willem, star of the TV show La Nouvelle Star, an equivalent
of Britain's Got Talent. Some of the fans on the site agreed to meet up
in Paris. Autin and Boileau met and fell in love. Autin was a long-time
gay rights campaigner in Montpellier. Boileau, who lived in Essonne
outside Paris, had not been out with a man before.
Now that they are married, the couple would like to adopt a child. They will both change their surname to Boileau-Autin.
The
standard wedding room at Montpellier's ultra-modern town hall wasn't
big enough for the 200 friends and family, 300 guests from activist
associations, 130 journalists from across the world and one government
minister, so it took place in a larger party hall - with a ceiling
fresco of fireworks and the obligatory town-hall portrait of the
president in a gold frame perched on an easel.
In her wedding
speech, Montpellier's mayor said the marriage marked a "historic day" in
the fight against discrimination in France and for "a society without
judgement or rejection." She called for an end to "so much hate,
violence, division".
The couple appeared on the city hall balcony
to cheers from a crowd of 200 to 300 people gathered in the street
below. The mayor's office had considered staging a live transmission of
the wedding on a giant screen outside, but ruled against it for security
reasons. Frigide Barjot, the comedian who leads the anti-gay marriage
movement, had urged militants to stay away from the wedding. "You don't
protest against people who love each other - otherwise this movement
becomes homophobic," she said.
Rights groups hoped the pictures of
the smiling newly-weds splashed across all media would draw a line
under the mass protests against same-sex marriage in France, the 9th
European country to legalise it. On Sunday, more than 150,000 people
marched through Paris on the last major demonstration, followed by 293
arrests after clashes between riot police and far-right groups. The
anti-gay marriage protests were the biggest right-wing street
demonstrations in France in decades. Tensions were exacerbated last when
when a far-right essayist, Dominique Venner, shot himself dead at the alter
of Paris's Notre Dame cathedral on Tuesday after leaving a blog post
railing against immigration and the "vile" law legalising same-sex
marriage.
Several outstanding issues, such as the right to
medically assisted conception by sperm donor and parental rights for
same-sex couples, have not yet been addressed by the law and remain part
of rights groups' struggle for equality which is not yet over in
France. One gay mayor in a Paris arrondissement likened the legalisation
of same-sex marriage to women winning the right to vote in France in
1944.
Autin took his husband's hand and told him: "I only have one fear about this marriage, that our lives won't be long enough."
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