At the end of the day France is still a Catholic country. Sure there are a lot of people who have stopped going to church but I think there is still a foundation there that is Catholic that won’t die out in a generation or two or three. For example the protests against gay marriage (that have received almost zero coverage here) I *think* are informed by a underlying Catholic belief (my theory).
I think there are about equal numbers of avowed evangelicals and Catholics in France now, and neither group worships for the sake of impressing their neighbors so they are probably more serious than in the past.
Yet it’s not that odd that the “land of romantic love” gives a cold shoulder to the idea of non heterosexual analogues. This is the land of viva la difference after all. In the name of tolerance they will put up with private shack-ups of any kind, but draw a big fat line at pulling it into formal mainstream ideas of marriage. They could do worse. The USA is actually more loveless than France, wild French romantic adventurism notwithstanding.
The French effectively destroyed the Catholic Church in the Revolution. They detest religion there as much as they love big government.