There are birthdays that get out of hand, and families that go to pieces when it comes time to blow out the cake candles. The tenth anniversary of the adoption of marriage for all, Sunday, April 23, gave rise, at the National Rally, to exchanges of crossfire, between those who welcome the adoption of the law on one side and the others , who claim their pride in having demonstrated alongside the Manif pour tous. A cleavage that has long shaken the party to the flame, where Marine Le Pen carefully avoids social debates. At the time of the debates on the Taubira bill, in 2012 and 2013, Marine Le Pen had deserted the demonstrations, but had spoken out against it. In 2017, the president of the National Front promised to repeal the text, before changing her mind for her 2022 campaign.
Ten years after the adoption of the measure, it only took a few tweets to rekindle the wounds of a lively debate. On the marriage for all side, the vice-president of the group in the National Assembly, Jean-Philippe Tanguy welcomed, Sunday, on Twitter: “Freedom, equality and fraternity are at the heart of the national identity. It is these French values that will overcome wokism, obscurantism and hatred, not bigotry.” A tone shared by the deputies Kévin Mauvieux (“Long live love!”) or his colleague from Var, Bryan Masson (“A strong and solid achievement in the beating heart of our country”).
The general secretary of the group obliged to call for calm
At the same time, still on the social network, other messages from colleagues seem to respond directly to them. “10 years ago, I was one of the hundreds of thousands of French people who took to the streets to oppose the #Marriage for all. With always the same respect for people, I have never given up defending the family so mistreated in recent years”, pleads the deputy of Gironde Grégoire de Fournas. A watchword also taken up by the deputy of Gard, Pierre Meurin ( “I always believe that the development of a child requires the complementary love of a mother and a father”), that of Vaucluse, Hervé de Lépinau (“Le #Marriage for all was a work of destabilizing national unity by fracturing society. I have no regrets for having expressed my opposition”), or even the elected representative of Gard, Nicolas Meizonnet (“I was one of those hundreds of thousands of French people to demonstrate ten years ago against the #Marriage for allwithout the slightest regret”).
Public exchanges involving collaborators and local elected officials of the far-right party… To the point that the secretary general of the RN group in the National Assembly, Renaud Labaye, had to deliver a message calling for appeasement in the WhatsApp group of parliamentary attachés, ordering them not to escalate the situation.
What is this digital game the name of? At the National Rally, we like to say that the most conservative elected officials would have gone to Eric Zemmour. However, this is far from being entirely the case: just look at the votes on the constitutionalization of abortion – 24 elected RNs voted against in November – to realize this. “What is annoying for me as for others, is that some express themselves in such a way that one would think that there is unanimity among us on these subjects. Marine has found a balance perfect that should be respected”, regrets one of the defenders of the Manif pour tous.
“Everyone can have their sensitivity, but the real political question is whether they are for the repeal of marriage for all, which did not yet appear in any presidential project, including that of Zemmour”, worries the deputy from the North. Bruno Bilde, who weighed heavily, internally, for the loss of influence of executives claiming a Catholic identity. Off the microphone, a deputy concedes to always be, in a private capacity, for the repeal of the law. “But don’t write it down,” he loosened. Officially, all share the line displayed by Grégoire de Fournas to L’Express, modeled on that of Marine Le Pen: “Repeal, no one defends it anymore, everyone understood that it was no longer possible”.
There remains the importance of being heard, and not deserting the field of the societal battle, including internally. “It’s a tactical reasoning: we must not establish a sanitary cordon with the conservative part of our electorate. We must show that the two tendencies exist”, assumes a conservative parliamentarian. Provided that everyone can get together around the table during family celebrations.