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[8 January 2012] - The opposition by the Church authorities against the bill on marriage rights for all in France suggests that Christians are unanimously opposed to the passing of the bill. In July 2012, however, 45 per cent of Catholics said they were in favour of marriage for all. […] The official position of the Church […] [The Church should] listen to homosexual persons and find out more about their living conditions, the discrimination they suffer from society and from the churches. They shouldn’t tolerate the exclusion of an individual from society because of his or her sexual orientation. Everyone knows that in this area a lot, if not everything, remains to be done. […] Can we continue, for example, as does the Catholic magisterium, to advocate that LGBT persons should be treated with respect and banish all sexual relations? Maintaining an unchangeable form of marriage […] Instead of spreading apocalyptic discourse on how the right to get married of tens of thousands of people of the same sex is supposed to undermine the foundations of society, churches should focus on a message more in line with the evolution of human life. Irreducible opponents claim the bill will put the life of the child in danger. There are 30 000 to 40 000 children raised in LGBT families. Are these children unhappy, abused or depraved? No. Opponents of the bill denounced the right of couples to adopt a child because it would deny the children of their rights. But the system governing child rights is the best legal system in our history. […] Secular societies It would be intellectually wrong to pretend otherwise and suspicious to see the opening of marriage to all as a threat to childhood, when all our laws protect children like never before. We are now in secular societies governed by the rule of law. They have proven to be much more conscious of the more vulnerable than in the past. Was it really better when, in a Christian society, Vincent de Paul, armed only with his holiness, found himself alone to save abandoned children on the cold forecourt of churches? Marriage, for those who choose it, is also - and perhaps has become - a love story that cannot be sealed for the sole purpose of procreation. This is both a meeting of minds and an institution through which society recognises as beneficial the lasting union between two people both equal and different. Adoption is a unique form of love […] Adoption is a unique form of love that can equally be the result of heterosexual or homosexual couples. To educate, nurture, protect, have authority over a child – with due respect for the law, is a selfless act that can be opened to married parents regardless of their sexual orientation. This right is already given to single persons. The issue of assisted procreation opens another debate. The problems it addresses equally concern heterosexual or homosexual parents: the realisation of a desire to have children and start a family should above all be consistent with the rights of the child. Whatever solution is chosen, we cannot compromise on the right of every child to know his or her origins, and any solution based on the commerce of the human body is not admissible. For the rest, Christianity, as Michel Serres says, is "a religion of adoption" that never limited love to the boundaries of the biological family or tribe. […] We urge our churches not to repeat the historical misinterpretation of the regulations of birth control and contraception by the Humane Vitae. How many women and men then left the Church, silent and bruised by the refusal of the Church to approve the use of the contraceptive pill? At the price of how many empty chairs?
Churches say that marriage is the condition of procreation. In France, 52 per cent of children are born outside marriage. Child rights are not exclusively related to parents' marital status.