This past Thursday, on January 14, the Institute for the Family and the Republic (IFR) held a press conference at the National Assembly to present and announce the publication of its white book entitled: Marriage and the law: Protecting children.
The IFR represents an independent think-tank of more than 120 lawyers: magistrates, high-level civil servants, university professors and lecturers, lawyers, solicitors. Created in December 2013, this institute aims to develop proposals on all questions related to human rights and the family.
Their work, published the same day and sent to all PMs and European deputies in France, focuses particular attention on questions of the May 17, 2014 law, which opens marriage vows between individuals of the same sex and filiation.
IFR notes that « the law of May 17, 2014 has opened an endless zone of legal uncertainty for families and couples rights as well as for filiation rights. This law completely ignores the child, who appears only as its collateral victim.” In this white book, the jurists ask “Must the law of May 17, 2013 be revised? How? And for what new right for the family and for filiation?” On IFR’s internet site, they specify that: “These are legitimate questions and call for specific legal answers from the specialists, away from unproductive polemics and political quarrels.”
Thanks to the work of more than 39 expert contributors, their book presents 7 concrete proposals offering the legislator a range of legal tools in order to, for example, conduct a real policy in favor of the family, abolish surrogate motherhood on an international level, and set up real worldwide protection for children
If, in an article published on the same day, Guillaume Drago and Geoffroy de Vries, respectively president and general secretary of IFR predict “that the family will be a challenging issue at stake in the presidential election”, for IFR, “After the storm, the time for level-headed legal rights has come. Two and a half years following the law’s enactment, the calming words are now for the jurists to pronounce.”
The book: Marriage and the law. Protecting children is on sale on their Internet site.
