Wednesday, December 22, 2004

More reason to love France

No, I really mean that--we now have more reason to love France! I never bought into the "Freedom Fries" stupidity, but I'll admit that I've always had some concerns with France. They're not the best of allies, but it's a beautiful country and the people aren't anywhere near as bad as they're made out to be.

In some ways, the French are way ahead of us. "How?" you ask? Like this. Gay men and women can't even get basic protections in many parts of this country, and France is making it a crime to even make homophobic statements. Bless their cheese-loving, frog leg-eating hearts.

By the way, yes, I am aware of our First Amendment protection of free speech, but this is hate speech. It may be a slippery slope to try to limit speech (we basically limit that to "incitement to violence" in this country), but I have to give the French credit for standing up to what they see as simple bigotry.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As my partner pointed out as I was reading the story on France..."Isn't it interesting that President Bush would be arrested under this new law".
k

Will said...

Another haven of rationality in Europe is Denmark. Fritz has good friends ther so we visit every three years or so. We were having dinner by the front window of a second floor restaurant in Copenhagen one evening and looked out to see a couple of middle-aged guys walking down the street holding hands. No big deal, just we're gay and Danish and this is what we do. Just lovely. The way life should be.