This is perhaps the main positive memory of François Hollande’s presidential mandate. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the vote on the law on marriage for all, the former President of the Republic returns to 20 minutes over this period. As on other files, he is reproached on the political management of the affair, François Hollande knows it very well and easily anticipates the grievances. He expresses regrets on the PMA for all, finally not voted during his mandate: an attitude rare enough to be underlined in the one to whom his critics reproach for too little self-criticism of his mandate.
What is your memory of this period?
The happiest thing was when the National Assembly voted definitively on the text and the marriage was registered, that I was able to have the responsibility of promulgating the law which established marriage for all and adoption. There were more difficult moments during the months of February and March with the numerous incidents in Parliament. Because there were very harsh obstructions, very brutal statements, inadmissible arrests, attacks on Minister Taubira… And in the street, homophobic remarks which one might think were no longer current. But what was even more serious were the almost daily acts in the street which called into question the physical integrity of LGBT people. Let’s agree that few had imagined that it would take this seriousness.
Did you anticipate such opposition?
I expected, unlike many, that there would be a dispute, as for Pacs. Except that it took on another dimension which, indeed, was rather unexpected. That is to say, a mobilization with considerable financial means, also thanks to the intervention of the Catholic Church, directly and of religions in general. With the presence of more often right-wing elected officials and the participation of a large number of our fellow citizens who were invested in this battle. Finally, I had myself underestimated what was going to be the importance of social networks in this story. We were in reactionary and traditionalist mobilizations with technological means that were powerful and modern. We saw it later in other disputes.
Marriage for all is a longstanding claim of the LGBT movement and in your program in 2012. Were you convinced?
Yes, I was convinced at the time of Pacs already. I often tell this anecdote: there had been a meeting incident at the time of the debate and therefore it had been necessary, as first secretary of the PS, to resume the dialogue with all the associations. And then two women members of LGBT family associations came to see me saying: “You see, we are two women, we live together, we raised our children…” And as if to “provoke” me, they told me: “None of them are homosexual. It was to tell me: “Don’t be afraid of anything.” Be aware that we educate our children because we love them. I didn’t need to be convinced, but it only reinforced his feeling that it was necessary to move faster. In reality, this text was in the interest of couples, but it was also in the interest of children. It was in the interest of all the families.
In the 2012 program, there was also PMA for all…
No, there was not this proposal. It was not in the 60 engagements. I had nevertheless given an interview to Stubborn and they had asked me the question of whether or not I was in favor of PMA for all. I said that I was in favor and that I would do everything so that there could possibly be this text. It could not be put in the text on marriage for legal and even political reasons, but there was a family bill in which, indeed, PMA for all could find its place.
But given what had already happened, we said to ourselves with Jean-Marc Ayrault that we had to leave some time to resume the discussion when the time came. But I deeply regret that it was not possible to have it voted on before the end of the mandate because I know what it meant for many women who had been waiting for a long time to be able to have the PMA. I was hoping that after me it would happen quickly, but alas, we had to wait another five years.
In a recent interview with Mediapart, your former Minister Delegate for the Family, Dominique Bertinotti, said that the PMA for all, you did not want it?
No, it’s not true, I’ve always been in favor of it. She wanted this progress to be integrated into the draft law on the family which was being prepared. But the risk was to prolong a sequence that had already been very painful. Especially since we were criticized for carrying out too many societal reforms and no social reforms. As if we wanted to provoke a confrontation and maintain a quarrel.
Did that seem justified to you as a reproach?
It seemed like a pointless quarrel to me because society is social. When we recognize the right to marriage and adoption, we solve social problems. And when we improve the social situation of families, whether homosexual or heterosexual, we settle a societal issue. And it is also a social question, the right to PMA for all. Because when the right is not recognized, women who have no money are deprived of children while those who have a little more go abroad.
There is one point that you have been reproached for during this period, it is…
The mayors !
So ! You spoke of “freedom of conscience” at the congress of mayors, you quickly returned to this formula…
Yes, because there were mayors who said: “I will never have a wedding. So I go to the congress of mayors, I say that we are not going to send the police to force the mayors to organize a ceremony, but that every municipality will be obliged to have a civil status officer. If it’s not the mayor, it’ll be his deputy. If it’s not the deputy, it’ll be the city councilman. I recognize that this formula was not happy in the sense that it suggested that everyone could not apply the law, like a doctor in relation to an abortion.
Didn’t that open a breach in which the opponents put themselves?
The protest in the streets took on forms that became more and more worrying because there was a challenge to legitimacy in reality. It cost us because I couldn’t move around without people waving flags, there were interruptions to public ceremonies… It lasted a long time. Faced with the parliamentary obstruction on the one hand and this brutality that we noted in certain demonstrations, I asked to accelerate the adoption of the text… Without needing to resort to 49.3! Some tell me today that I should have! If we had, we would have done the marriage a disservice, on the pretext of fighting the obstruction.
Indeed, the opponents of marriage for all have long pursued you in your travels, it was a bit like your “Captain Haddock’s plaster”… Can the challenge to the pension reform be the same for your successor?
I prefer to have the plaster of marriage than that of retreats! It is a text which has taken nothing away from anyone and which has given new freedoms to many. I have never been stopped in the street since I am no longer president by people hostile to marriage. On the other hand, I was often thanked for the law.
It seems that to talk about the legacy of your mandate, what comes up most often is marriage for all. Does that satisfy you? Or is it unfair?
Each presidential mandate is marked by a great law of freedom or society. It is both a recognition and an injustice. The law on abortion, the law on the abolition of the death penalty, mark progress in human dignity. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s marriage for all. It is true that it is recognition, because it is a law that symbolizes progress. But it is also in a way an injustice because there are other texts that have changed people’s lives, such as retirement at 60 for those who had 42 years of contributions, complementary health insurance… But it’s like that. So much the better if there are laws that illustrate what a warrant was.