A quick footnote to what I published earlier today about Frigide Barjot and Gilbert Collard: as the indefatigable news-reader Chris Morley tells readers here in a comment about that posting, the French National Assembly did pass the marriage equality bill, making same-sex marriage legal in France (though a threat of annulling the bill has already been issued). But as Chris also reports, in advance of the bill's passing, someone tweeted the statement "Il faut tuer les homosexuels" ("Homosexuals must be killed"), and this hashtag is trending on Twitter.
I'll post Chris's entire posting here for Bilgrimage readers to see it (with Chris's links embedded and a few text additions to weave them into his comment):
First the good news - The National Assembly has just passed the Bill for equal marriage and same sex adoption in the final vote, by 331 in favour - 225 against. All that remains is for President Francois Hollande to sign the Bill for it to become French law. However the center-right opposition party UMP has vowed to appeal to the Constitutional Council (CC). If the UMP can gather 60 senators or deputies, the CC can annul or veto the bill if it rules it unconstitutional. Dominique Bertinotti, French minister for family, has said: ‘Even in the event of an appeal to the Constitutional Council, we can consider that [marriage equality] will become law in late June. ‘Starting this summer, gay couples can marry’ (see here and here).
Meanwhile the homophobic violence and threats continue.
On Twitter a hashtag that roughly translates as "Homosexuals must be killed" is trending. It is unknown where ‘Il Faut Tuer Les Homosexuels’ started from, but thousands of social networking users are tweeting about the trending topic.
As Yagg.com points out, many are pointing to a user called Mamadou Neutron for the original tweet. He has since deleted the tweet but continues to publish homophobic messages (and see also here).
While some anti-gay Twitter users have just posted the hashtag, others have added messages like ‘Kill them all’ and ‘For a better world…’
Gay rights organization SOS Homophobie is inviting everyone to screen capture the homophobic tweets and send the pictures to them.
At a Manif Pour Tous protest on Friday night, anti-gay activists battled French riot police. One of the protesters in the scuffle is a Catholic priest with the anti-semitic Society of St Pius X, who runs the church, St Nicolas du Chardonnet, outside of which the melee occurred. A clip of the incident is here.
Many thanks to Chris! I apologize for being slow to post much (or reply to comments) here in the last day or so, too. Steve and I are out of town in Houston to attend my uncle's funeral, which is tomorrow, and my time to read the news and post here is a little straitened--and all the more reason for my profound gratitude to Chris.