Earlier this week a French mayor said he’ll go to prison before performing a same-sex wedding ceremony. Today another mayor is in the national news.
Claude Binaud, six-time mayor of Matha, a town in the Charente-Maritime region of south-western France, has caused a stir by refusing to marry a local man, Bernard Rouhaud, and his partner, it was reported on Friday. He qualified his refusal, however, by saying that he “might marry two girls.” Binaud, 77, has been a consistent opponent of gay marriage, which became legal in France in May after months of fraught national debate and even violent clashes. “There’s no doubt, I will not marry them, not two boys,” he told regional daily Sud-Ouest. “I don’t find it [gay marriage] normal. We’re touching on something central to society here – the family,” he said. “Two girls, I might have said yes, if my back was against the wall. But that’s totally different, they can have children,” he added.
French Interior Minister Manuel Valls has issued a warning that any mayor that refuses a same-sex ceremony faces three years in prison and a €45,000 fine.