François Hollande stands firm on same-sex marriage

Well good for the French president François Hollande.

He has repeated that there won't be a referendum on proposals to allow couples of the same-sex to marry or to adopt.

"It's a promise I made to the French and it has to be honoured (some throat clearing might be necessary in believing the next bit) just as the other promises I made, have to be," he said in his New Year wishes to parliament this week.

All right so the protests might not be over yet, but with the end of January approaching and the proposals due to go before parliament, it's maybe Hollande showing that he actually has the cajones to follow through on a pledge.

Perhaps he's not so "Flanby" after all and is less lightweight with no hard core set of principles than his critics might claim.

From Wikipedia

After all, isn't there a sense of social justice in allowing those who wish to marry someone of the same sex, to do so?

Those 800,000 who marched in Paris recently (a questionable figure anyway as official statistics provided by the police put the number at around 350,000, even if we all know those can also be "massaged") will now just have to get used to the idea that the law is likely to pass.

As will those who claim to be oh-so-proud of their discriminatory and reactionary views as to what constitutes a "marriage", because - well it's going to happen, just as it has in Argentina, Belgium, the Netherlands, South Africa or Spain (to name but a few).

And that, dear reader, is called progress.

Welcome to the 21st century...France.