points in Paris. Many came after long train and bus rides from the provinces.

"Hollande has pledged to push through the law with his Socialists' parliamentary majority but the opponents' campaign has dented public support and forced deputies to put off a plan to allow lesbian couples access to artificial insemination. Champ de Mars park at the Eiffel Tower was packed, but turnout estimates varied widely. Organisers claimed 800,000 had protested, while police put the number at 340,000."

"Nobody expected this two or three months ago," said Frigide Barjot, a flamboyant comedian leading the "demo for all". At the rally, she read out a letter to Hollande asking him to withdraw the draft bill and hold an extended public debate on the issue. Strongly backed by the Catholic church hierarchy, Barjot and groups working with her mobilised church-going families and political conservatives as well as some Muslims, evangelicals and even gay people opposed to same-sex marriage. Hollande's office said the turnout was substantial but would not change his determination to pass the reform.Slogans on the posters and banners approved by the organizers included "marriagophile, not homophobe," "all born of a father and mother" and "paternity, maternity, equality"."

Notice the Orwellian newspeak used in the camp of those who oppose true marriage. They are attempting to frame the public struggle by calling those of us who defend marriage as somehow "anti-marriage". We must resist this propaganda and stay clear in our message and cultural mission. Homosexual partnerships are incapable of being marriages.We are the ones defending marriage, and the family and society founded upon it. Marriage is what it is, to use a popular expression. 

To limit marriage to heterosexual couples is not discriminatory now, nor has it ever been. Homosexual couples cannot bring into existence what marriage intends by its very definition. To insist with the police power of the State that we pretend otherwise does not serve the common good. To confer by governmental fiat the benefits that have been conferred in the past only to stable married couples and families to homosexual paramours is bad public policy. To state this is not to be "anti-gay". It is to defend marriage and the family. It is to serve the common good.

As for the position of the catholic Church, it is crystal clear. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Catholic Church explained in 2003."The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose."

"No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives."

Civil institutions do not create marriage nor can they create a new "right" to marry for those who are incapable of marriage. Government has long regulated marriage for the common good. For example, the ban on polygamy and age requirements were enforced in order to ensure that there was a mature decision at the basis of the Marriage contract. Heterosexual marriage, procreation, and the nurturing of children form the foundation for the family, and the family forms the foundation of civil society.

What occurred in Paris this weekend is the beginning of a resistance movement which is spreading. We must all take our place within its ranks.