French parliament prepares for battle over gay `marriages'

ONE OF the most virulent parliamentary battles in recent French history will begin tomorrow when the government presents plans to allow homosexual and heterosexual couples to enter legal agreements, short of marriage.

The proposed "civil solidarity pact", or PACS, has already been condemned by the Catholic Church in France as an assault on the family and by some centre-right politicians as a homosexuals' charter.

Something similar already exists in Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. But France is the the first Latin, and mainly Catholic, country to consider such an agreement.

It would give unmarried couples broadly equivalent inheritance, tax, health, and tenants' rights to married couples. It would not give them the right to adopt children.

Originally, it was conceived as a partial answer to demands by homosexual organisations for a form of legally recognised marriage ceremony. To avoid homophobic attacks from the right, and from populists within its own ranks, the government broadened the idea to include heterosexuals.

This opened another front of attack, from the Catholic Church and family lobbies, who fear the PACS will confirm the trend against marriage among young French people. The Church hierarchy and most of the right says the PACS would give people all the advantages of marriage without the constraints. It would leave the children of PACS couples in a social and legal no-man's land.

Meanwhile, homophobic attacks on the proposed law continue. "The PACS was invented by a gay deputy to appease the homosexual lobby," said Guy Teyssier, one of the leaders of the Democratic Liberal party.

Supporters of the PACS, including a sprinkling of politicians on the right, say such attacks ignore the social realities of late 20th-century France. There are already two million heterosexual couples living together without being married. Four in 10 French children are born outside wedlock. One marriage in two in the greater Paris area ends in divorce.

Supporters say the PACS will give children of unmarried parents more certainty than they have now. It may prove a stepping stone to the altar, encouraging a form of legal commitment which will lead reluctant couples to go further.

The draft law goes before the Socialist group in the National Assembly tomorrow and is expected to reach the assembly proper early next month.

A PACS couple would be eligible for joint taxation benefits after three years. If one partner died, the other would receive generous allowances on death duty; they would have an automatic right to take over a lease in the other partner's name. The "dependant" half of such a couple would be able to enjoy the other's health benefits. A foreigner who became pacse to a French person could claim the right to live in France.

Elisabeth Gigou, the justice minister, said the PACS was a way of allowing the law to catch up with reality; it would grant a legal and social status, which corresponded with the way that many people lived.

"For example, I was revolted by the situation of some homosexual couples. One person falls ill with Aids and his family refuse to have anything to do with his partner. That is humanly unacceptable," she said.