Sunday’s March for Marriage in Paris was so huge it shocked the organizers

Oct 19, 2016 by Jill

by Jeanne Smits, LifeSite:

The “Manif pour tous” has done it again. On Sunday, the French capital was once again the meeting place for tens of thousands of peaceful but determined demonstrators demanding laws that respect true marriage and ban artificial procreation, especially surrogate motherhood and in vitro fertilization for same-sex couples. To be honest, in the absence of legislative deadlines, four and a half years into François Hollande’s presidential mandate, no one was expecting an enormous turn-out. But some 200,000 people, according to the organizers – the police only counted 24,000, something of an understatement… – marched through the wide avenues of the residential 16th arrondissement à Paris towards the Place du Trocadéro, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, in the still warm autumn sun.

Even the organizers were taken by surprise: the venue was too small for the crowds whose steady flow kept pouring onto the square between 3 p.m. and 5.30 p.m., while those who had arrived early left to make room.

The “Manif pour tous” was created in 2012 to act against the proposed same-sex “marriage” law, called “Marriage for all” or mariage pour tous, that was to be one of Hollande’s societal landmark texts. That battle was lost when the law was adopted in 2013. But the popular uprising against the destruction of marriage has deep roots. The new watchword is “We’ll never give up” – On ne lâche rien – and a genuine family movement is building up in France.

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