The French bishops' conference issued a nine-page paper outlining the main debating points for and against the reform planned for next year and detailed several legal and anthropological objections to same-sex marriage, avoiding religious reasoning.
The paper stresses that the Church respects homosexuals and rejects discrimination, but argues that the demand for gay marriage reduces a complex social institution to a question of equal rights for individuals based on "amorous sentiment, which is by definition ephemeral".
It claimed those calling for it do not take seriously enough issues of procreation, paternity and the duties of spouses to each other and parents to children.