Everybody has heard of the very difficult vote in France on the law on same-sex marriage. After weeks of demonstrations, the law was finally adopted on 17 May 2013. The title of the law, ‘opening marriage to same-sex couples’, does not really describe its full contents. As a matter of fact, the law makes marriage and adoption available to same-sex couples. A new provision in the Civil Code (Article 6-1) provides: ‘Le mariage et la fi liation adoptive emportent les memes eff ets, droits et obligations reconnus par les lois, a l'2xclusion de ceux prévus au titre VII du livre 1er du présent code, que les époux ou les parents soient de sexe diff érents ou de meme sexe.’

This means that same-sex marriages and different-sex marriages do not have identical effects when it comes to parentage. Only adoption and not, at the moment, biological filiation is possible in same-sex marriages. Placing such a provision at the beginning of the Code together with other general principles was vigorously criticised as this was not considered to be its rightful place.

It has also been said that it is not ‘a marriage for everybody’ since there are two categories of marriages: on the one hand, the different-sex marriage with eff ects on fi liation and the presumption of paternity, and on the other, the samesex marriage witheff ects on adoption only. However, this has nevertheless been a great victory for homosexual couples in that they have been given the rights to marry and to adopt.

Before presenting the contents of the new law as regards adoption (section 2), it might be interesting to briefl y summarise the previous situation under French law (section 1), and then to look at what the next step will be (section 3).

THE PAST

The position of the Court of Cassation was very well exposed by the ECtHR in the case of Gas and Dubois v France (15 March 2012).

COUR DE CASSATION 24 FEBRUARY 2006

The Cour de cassation accepted a delegation of parental responsibility provided by Article 377 of the Civil Code on 24 February 2006 in a case where a same-sex couple were involved.