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Nearly One in Seven Weddings in Paris is Between Gay Couple

The Daily Telegraph

Nearly one in seven weddings in Paris last year were between homosexual couples, according to figures from the national statistics office.

A total of 1,331 gay couples, or 13.5 per cent, married in the French capital in 2014.

The national figure was three per cent.

The first gay marriage in Paris took place on June 7, 2013, days after a law allowing such unions came into force.

The legislation, the key social reform of Francois Hollande's presidency to date, provoked unexpectedly fierce debate in a country that prides itself on its human rights.

Opponents staged protests on a scale not seen in decades, with more than 150,000 people marching through Paris and clashing with riot police.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president recently re-elected to lead the conservative UMP party, has pledged to repeal the law.

Marriages in France are held in town halls and the Parisian statitistics reflect the capital's political dividing line, separating the conservative west from the Left-leaning east.

Most same-sex marriages - 72 per cent - took place in arrondissements with Socialist mayors. About a third of those were in the 4th arrondissement, home to the fashionable Marais neighbourhood, which has the capital's biggest concentration of gay bars.

The 16th arrondissement in the west, which starts at the Arc de Triomphe, had the lowest number of gay marriages of all the 20 arrondissements last year, at just 6.2 per cent of the total.

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