FRANCE HAS reacted with shock and outrage to a decision by the high court in Lille to annul a marriage because the bride was not a virgin. The case involving a Muslim couple has revived fears that France's second religion is eroding the country's secular tradition.
Two years ago, a 30-year-old French engineer, a convert to Islam, married a 20-year-old Muslim nursing student in the northern town of Roubaix. She had assured her fiancee that she was a virgin.
The last of 500 wedding guests were still drinking mint tea in the hotel reception when the bridegroom returned, distraught because there were no bloodstains on the sheets of the marital bed.
He contacted his lawyer the following morning to file for annulment. His bride later admitted she had had sexual intercourse before marriage.
"He felt tricked," the groom's lawyer, Xavier Labbée, a specialist in family law, told Le Parisien.
"He couldn't imagine building a lasting union based on a lie. The court understood."
The tribunal based its decision on article 180 of the French civil code, which says: "If there was an error about the person, or about the essential qualities of the person, the other spouse may demand the annulment of the marriage."
Of 274,000 marriages celebrated in France in 2006, 1,824 were annulled, most by the authorities suspecting immigration fraud.
Annulments have been granted on the grounds of sterility, or because a spouse hid a police record, addiction, disease, previous marriage, bigamy, incest or religious beliefs.
The justice ministry said it knew of no false virginity precedent.
The annulment, granted last month, was revealed in a legal review on Thursday. The outcry was immediate.
"Appalling," said the Socialist Party. "It amounts to legalising the repudiation of wives who aren't virgins," said Sihem Habchi, the president of "Ni Putes, ni soumises" which defends women's rights in the immigrant suburbs.
Elisabeth Badinter, a prominent feminist, said she felt "ashamed" for the French justice system and predicted the result will be "to make a lot of young Muslim girls rush to hospitals to have their hymen sewn back".
Although the National College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians considers such operations an affront to the dignity of women, the procedure is freely available in plastic surgery clinics for between €1,000 and €2,000.
A spokesman of the ruling right-wing UMP said that if French law allowed the annulment, "the law is not good; it must be changed".
The party's secretary general, Patrick Devedjian, said that, if need be, the party will go to the Court of Cassation, France's supreme court, "to end a very worrisome situation".
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