"Société sans père, société sans repère" - 600,000 demonstrate vs artificial reproduction, in vitro fertilization

"Société sans père, société sans repère!" ("Society without father, society without landmark!") That was the slogan chanted by 600,000 demonstrators in Paris last Sunday. They took to the streets to protest against proposed government (read: taxpayer) funding of "medically assisted procreation" -- sperm donation and in vitro fertilization -- for lesbian couples and single women.

Largely ignored by the centre-left government of Emmanuel Macros (which is responsible for the proposal), as well as the lamestream media in France and North America, the protesters marched past the French Senate, bearing signs expressing the old-fashioned notion that every child should be born to a mother and a father. Their signs and placards featured such slogans as "Where is my dad?", "Liberty, Equality, Paternity" (a play on "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", the national motto -- geddit?), and "Everyone needs a father."

The leaders of the mainstream Catholic Church were absented themselves from the demonstration -- too busy worshipping Mother Earth in Amazonia, no doubt -- but a large number of traditional Catholic, rightist and populist groups took part, including La Manif Pour Tous, Alliance Vita, les Associations Familiales Catholiques, and le Comité Protestant Évangélique pour la Dignité Humaine. Polilticians from Marine Le Pen's Parti National were also present, along with a few from the Republicans.

Last month, the lower house of the French parliament approved a draft bioethics law which would allow lesbian and single women to conceive children with medical help. The bill must now be approved by the Senate, before it can be passed. As French law stands now, only heterosexual couples who have been married or living together for more than two years have the right to access procedures such as in vitro fertilisation, artificial insemination or sperm donation. M Macron's government, pandering to the LGBTQ+++ lobby, wants to extend this right to all wimmin. [What about men who "identify as women"? Ed.]

The organizers of the protest, dubbed "Marchons Enfants" contend that the parliamentary debates were "ignored" and "despised". Ludovine Dutheil de La Rochère, president of La Manif Pour Tous, said that in the face of failed attempts to discuss the ethics, rather than economics, of the measure, the only way to be heard was to take to the streets.

Thus the gathering of well over half a million to protest "the manufacture of children voluntarily deprived of fathers", "submission to ultra-liberal capitalism judging the dignity of a person only at its economic value", and "the weakening of the family fabric and therefore the whole society."