Posted on 07/04/2005 8:29:41 PM PDT by blogblogginaway
PARIS (AP) - France has updated a two-century-old law to remove a distinction in the legal status of children born out of wedlock and those born to married couples. The change approved by the Cabinet Monday removes the distinction between a "legitimate" child and a "natural" child born to unmarried parents, which first appeared in the 1804 Napoleonic code.
The revision means that the relationship of an unmarried mother to her child will automatically be recognized. Until now, unmarried mothers had to go to city hall to register themselves as new parents. Unmarried fathers will still need to declare themselves officially to authorities.
Almost half of all births in France in 2004 were to unmarried couples, compared with only 11.4 percent in 1980.
The new measure was passed by the Cabinet, a rarely used tactic that moves quickly and bypasses parliament
They are not bastards, they are patrimonially liberated.
25 years later 339% increase in b@stards, (I'm not crowing), I imagine many areas/cities in the USA exceeds that number.
And I thought the French were all bastards.
They are - but this is official government recognition of the fact. Let's hope it's like an alcoholic taking the first step to recovery by admitting to their problem.
I can see it now - "Hi, my name is Jacques Chirac and I'm a bastard."
(wow, guess I've been celebrating the Fourth a little too much)
make that "like hometoroost said" and make the=they
..some b@stards are more than equal, to other b@stards...they are the effete b@st@rds...."Hi, my name is Jacques Chirac and I'm a b@st@rd." :D
later pingout.
The average in the US is about 35%, blacks in the US about 80%, and the UK 49%. Bad, bad symptom of the decay of civilization.
A generation of fatherless children, running amok or in some way psychologically seriously impaired. MOre likelihood of becoming criminal, turning to drugs/alcohol, broken or no marriage themselves, and higher incidence of homosexuality.
What Frace is doing is naturally stupid/abominable. It's like trying to cure a disease by calling it an advantage. "Wow! You got polio, you lucky dog, you!"
Moral Absolutes Ping.
Note my comment #10. Saying it's just fine doesn't make it just fine.
God made it so that conception takes a man and a woman. Raising a child takes a man and a woman.
For some reason, a segment of the world's people have dedicated themselves to destroying human civilization. I can't really understand why. The only thing I can come up, actually two possible reasons:
1. They want to see society fall apart so they can have a totalitarian government.
2. They just naturally hate all morals, natural law, and peace and prosperity because they are evil.
Anyone else have any ideas? (The above two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.)
Freepmail me if you want on/off this pinglist.
I guess that any day now the french will pass a law allowing private homes to have flush toilets.
They believe all externally imposed definitions of morality are totalitarian. Their culture went through several totalitarian imposed moral codes, so they associate the two as being dependent on each other.
The Church propped up the monarchy, no matter what. In order to drag down the monarchy, the French had to also drag down the church. Early in the Reign of Terror they kicked the church out & imposed a new dynamic, where the state was able to redefine morality & imposed it using fear. When that didn't accomplish all they had hoped for they allowed the church back in, but only nominally & it answered to the state in ways that it never had before.
Protestant monarchies are a little different, though most of them have a "state church" & the slip away from morality in those places are somewhat different. In some ways or cases they are running, rather than sliding. I think some or most of them are kinda reverting to their cultural roots based in paganism. Easter (bunnies & eggs, pagan fertility symbols), Christmas trees & colours, Halloween, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, pagan beliefs were never fully pushed out or our societies. Where church starts to get wishy washy, other things come in to fill the void.
Ummm, folks, I know you all really hate the French, but just think for a minute what the French law has just done.
In France, until this law was passed, the MOTHER of an illegitimate child was NOT legally the child's mother UNTIL she went before the state, in the Mairie, and formally declared herself the mother. If she did not do so, she was not entitled to any benefits or anything else for the child, because she was NOT the mother of the child as far as the state was concerned.
That is far, far, far stricter than American law ever has been.
American law is that, legally, the mother is the woman on the birth certificate, and the father is the man on the birth certificate.
In France, that used to be only true if the parents were MARRIED. Then, the names of father and mother would be recorded on the birth certificate. But if the parents were NOT married, they each had to go and declare their parentage before the state, a separate step.
Today, France has bowed to the obvious and removed the step as it pertains to the MOTHER, only. The mother is obviously the mother, because she gave birth in the hospital. So, now women don't have to go before the government organs to declare their maternity, if they are not married (they have never had to in America at all).
But FATHERS still have to do so. The father of an illegitimate child in France still has to go before the state and officially aver that he is the father in an official act.
In the United States, merely by having the man's name on the birth certificate, he is the father, legally. Note that this means that in the US an unmarried woman can simply declare that the father is thus-and-so, and if the hospital writes that name on the certificate, the father has to go and prove he ISN'T the father in some paternity suit. Whatever man's name is on the American birth certificate gets the rights of being a father.
Not so in France. If the couple is unmarried, the man has to positively state he is the father in a separate act in order to have ANY rights involving the child at all. And until this law was passed, that was also true of the mother.
So, I see here lots of the usual French-bashing, because it is fun, I suppose. And I see hand-wringing about moral decline. What has happened, if this IS moral decline, is that France has taken half a step down to join the US in the sewer of utter depravity, if the definition of depravity is to have a birth certificate made in the hospital be the place where maternity and paternity are formally established. In France, there's still an extra step for the father. Not so in America. And in America it doesn't make a lick of difference if the parents are married or not.
Oh, why does this matter so much?
Because under French civil law, you cannot disinherit your children. So, who the parents are by law matters. Before, illegitimate mothers could simply walk away and their biological children were not legally theirs. They became the wards of the state and were adopted out through the state orphanage system. Now, mothers cannot escape their children. Fathers still can.
Are we really SURE that what France has done here is a sign of moral decay? I am not.
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