Same-Sex Families and Legal Recognition in Europe by Marie Digoix

Author:Marie Digoix
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783030370541
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

5.1 Introduction

A bill permitting female couples and single women to access assisted reproductive technology (ART) in France will be presented to the National Assembly in 2019 as part of the revision of the French Bioethics Law. If the bill is voted, ART will no longer be reserved to heterosexual couples, becoming legal for all women regardless of their conjugal status or sexual orientation. The bill is a further example of the progress achieved on the rights of sexual minorities in France in the last few decades, other key breakthroughs including the legalization of the civil partnership (PACS) in 1999 and same-sex marriage in 2013. The political and social debates preceding the legalization of same-sex marriage focused on the issue of filiation and same-sex parenting. While the law of 2013 made it possible for same-sex couples to adopt, it failed to respond to the full set of issues raised by the plurality of existing same-sex families. These legal advances have been accompanied by the increasing social acceptance of homosexuality in French society, as reflected in the latest major survey on sexuality in France (Bajos and Beltzer 2008). But that acceptance remains socially differentiated and is more prevalent among young people, women and the most educated. Reticence over same-sex parenting remains more persistent, even if French society is no longer as divided as the media hype around the “Manif pour tous” demonstrations may have suggested. The survey shows that 53% of women and 46% of men accept the idea of two women raising a child together and 46% and 34%, respectively, of two men doing so. The underlying social logics appear to be similar to those at play in the acceptance of homosexuality but are heightened by the strength of gender-specific perceptions of maternity.

Despite the legal obstacles and constraints in terms of social acceptance, a number of same-sex parent families now exist in France, though they are difficult to identify (Rault 2009). Demographer Patrick Festy estimated that the number of children living with a same-sex couple in 2005 was between 24,000 and 40,000, the large majority with a female couple (Festy 2006). More recently, the French National Institute for Statistical and Economic Studies, INSEE, estimated the number of same-sex couples at around 200,000, 10% of them living at times with at least one child. A variety of family arrangements are involved, with most children being born from a previous union and some living part of the time with the other parent. The study confirms that women represent the majority, at roughly eight couples out of ten (Buisson and Lapinte 2013).

Supplementing a quantitative approach, this chapter looks at the way in which lesbians and gays manage their visibility, couple and family, as well as the difficulties they are confronted with owing to their homosexuality as regards the existing legal system in France. The chapter draws on the results of the French part of a comparative survey made in a number of European countries in 2014 and 2015 as part of the European research project, FamiliesAndSocieties1.

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