PARIS, June 4 (UPI) -- Dominique Adamski and Francis Dekens had just about everything wrapped up for their wedding -- from the rings and the caterer, to the exact time of their June 19 ceremony in the southern French town of Marseillan, where the Socialist mayor had informally agreed to wed them.
But their plans skid to a halt Wednesday afternoon, when Mayor Williams Meric changed his mind.
In a news release, Meric said while he was "favorable" to same-sex marriages, he was opposed to conducting an illegal ceremony.
"Of course we're very disappointed," said Adamski, a 50-year-old retiree, in a telephone interview. "But all of this relaunches the debate. And I think we need to organize a referendum on gay marriage in France if politicians row against public opinion."
Adamski's setback comes on the eve of France's first gay wedding ceremony, scheduled Saturday in another tiny French town called Begles.
The town's Greens Party mayor, Noel Mamere, is defying a growing chorus of opposition from both the political left and the right -- not to mention threats of penal and administrative sanctions -- to push ahead with the June 5 ceremony. A leading Greens Party member, Mamere has argued in a series of interviews that France's marriage code says nothing about limiting the alliance to heterosexuals. And he has described Saturday's wedding as a necessary act of civil disobedience, if French laws are to reflect social realities.
"A mayor has the right to interpret fundamental texts and legislation to the evolution of mores and needs of his constituents -- and not to the traditions and social norms in place since Napoleonic times," Mamere argues on his Web site, in a statement that calls for legalizing gay adoption and other rights for gay couples.
But Adamski's experience in Marseillan suggests France may not be following a crop of European countries in embracing same-sex marriages anytime soon.
Gay nuptials are legal in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands. Gays in Germany are accorded the same rights as married heterosexual couples, under a 2001 "contract of communal life."
And next door, in staunchly Roman Catholic Spain, the country's new Socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has vowed to legalize gay unions. Even far-right French leader Jean-Marie Le Pen surprised many this week when he appeared to endorse marriage between homosexuals.
"If two people love each other, after all, why not?" Le Pen asked reporters in Lyon Wednesday.
But later, in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper, the National Front leader said his remarks were intended as ironic, and he was "absolutely opposed" to same-sex weddings.
Many other French lawmakers are, too.
Indeed, conservative Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has threatened Mamere with unspecified sanctions should he carry out the ceremony.
The local public prosecutor has also vowed to pursue Mamere. Not only is the same-sex wedding illegal, he argued, but the gay male couple in question does not reside in Begles.
The Begles ceremony "is a gesture of provocation and illegality," agreed Jean Leonetti, a deputy in the French National Assembly and a member of Raffarin's conservative Union for a Popular Movement party. "It will be difficult to explain to our youth living in troubled neighborhoods that they must respect the law if a town mayor does not."
In general, Leonetti said in an interview, the ruling UMP party "is very attached to individual liberties, but it not favorable to extending marriage to homosexuals."
Even members of the leftist opposition are against same-sex unions.
France's far left and scattered Socialist lawmakers have spoken out in favor of gay marriages, and several leftist mayors say they might be willing to perform them. Indeed, another wedding is scheduled in Normandy later this summer.
But several prominent Socialists, including former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, have come out against gay weddings. And Bertrand Delanoe, the gay Socialist mayor of Paris, has kept a low profile on the subject.
"I think he's been a bit discreet," said Veronique Verisson, spokeswoman for Lesbian and Gay Pride of Bordeaux, referring to Delanoe's stance. "At the best, I think it's a bit prudent -- and at the worst, it's not very courageous."
In a compromise gesture, UMP deputies have floated the chance of broadening rights of same-sex couples under France's civil solidarity pacts. Passed in 1999, the pacts offer gay and heterosexual couples legal recognition but far fewer benefits than those granted under marriage.
But for Adamski and Dekens, who were the first gay couple to be united under the pacts five years ago, improving the unions aren't the answer.
"That's not what we want," Adamski said. "We want marriage."
