Tugdual Derville’s Speech
October 16, 2016. Spoken from the Human Rights esplanade, at the place du Trocadero in Paris – The Demonstration for All
Dear friends,
Four years! Four years of peaceful, unwavering loyalty to support our convictions, four years acting for children and families… which are still on the agenda today, more than ever.
Unlike so many words, many “so-called political” words, blown away by an autumn breeze like fallen leaves, we’ve held our ground! We’ve held our ground!
All observers – whether or not they agree with our motivations for demonstrating – are honestly willing to concede: our huge public movement has already had an effect. Already, dear friends, the groundwork laid by those who had been trying for years to “pulverize” society, step by step, following the philosophy of “deconstruction” has been ground to a halt.
No need to recall that if marriage was offered to same-sex couples it was for another purpose than equality. As early as 2004 the philosopher Jacques Derrida was in favor of the sham “gay wedding ceremony” in Bègles, while simultaneously advocating for the abolition of marriage. Likewise today Caroline Mécary, barrister, discloses the Trojan horse strategy (I quote her): “In order to abolish marriage, we first have to ensure that everyone has access to it”.
Additionally, and foremost, our social movement constitutes a promise! A promise to build a society which is no longer based on tyrannical desires. a society founded on altruism, on caring and on respect to the most vulnerable people in our society. Such a society is already on its way, thanks to you! It is using the three supporting beams of anthropological giving, of human ecology.
– First of all maternity: the physical gestation we want to protect for future generations from surrogacy, from body commodification, from disappearing purely and simply under pressure from transhumanists.
– Then sexual alterity: all reproduction stems from this original male-female parity, whereas those who stand for deconstruction intend to multiply alleged “social parents”; and scientists have already started making GM embryos and babies “with 3 parents”…
– Finally, the family, a human ecology, founded on – I dare say – love, sexual fidelity and engagement. This family, my dear friends, is the foundation of fraternity. This is the first « political » entity, the origin of all lawful authority, a comfort when the crisis comes, a safe investment from the beginning to the end of life, where genuine freedom, equality and fraternity is to be learnt.
At a time, my dear friends, when society is questioning its identity, its roots, its prospects, we are not calling for an uprooted man, enslaved by his own desires, but for a deep-rooted man, in relation with other men, who accepts to depend on other men, to be vulnerable and to respect human limitations.
To our current and future governments, we say: there is no such a thing as political leadership without a well-balanced vision of man, without respecting the basics of human ecology.
To all of you, my friends, those present, as well as those who were unable to come, I want to address a solemn appeal! I want to warn you against the temptation to feel helpless waiting for a providential leader. With all the due respect and gratitude we owe the elected officials who have supported us throughout these past years, I want to declare that:
– We are all politicians and responsible, fighting on our local level for justice.
– We are all social workers, helping the most vulnerable among us.
– We are all humanitarian entrepreneurs taking initiatives to relieve, console and support our fellow citizens in dire situations.
Those who have been doing their best since 2012 to minimize and crush our social movement, to predict its inevitable extinction, do not see clearly. They cannot see what is incessantly germinating in the grass roots of our society.
Confronted with the mainstream conformist thinking, with a totalitarian emptiness which cannot stand contestation, we are here, present, INERADICABLE. Like the Czechoslovakian dissident Vaclav Benda, we occupy the space left vacant by a government, which is incompetent, powerless, failing, in order to bring what his friend Vaclav Havel used to call: LIFE IN TRUTH.
This is our political program for 2017!
Together, this is what we will defend and achieve, unabated, without delay, and with many elected representatives to support us!
Thank you !
Tugdual Derville
