PACS: at issue
The legal contract of solidarity (Pacte Civil de Solidarité or PACS) keep raising strong emotions and active debates from all sides. This draft bill always keeps changing and is in fact a real problem for society. It will institute the different ways of private life. The union between two persons cannot be restricted to the only institution of marriage. Family is not any more synonymous of marriage. In France, almost 5 million people live as non-married couples, 39% of the children are born out of wedlock.
Taking into account this situation, PACS tries to translate a law that corresponds to the evolution of the customs in the society. It puts into law a practice already followed by a great number of couples.
Can we accept cohabitation of unmarried heterosexual or homosexual persons? Is it possible to make lawful a way of living for couples who are deprived of any legal protection?
PACS does not refer to principles. It is pragmatic. It starts from the situations lived by women and men to provide equal rights between couples. We should not see it as a threat to marriage. It is not done to replace or to compete with it.
How it is, with its limits and its deficiencies, PACS seems to me a chart towards progress and freedom for every woman or man to have the right to decide how to cohabit together in our community.
Generations to come will hopefully go further and force us to have another
look at the needs of society and family. Why should we not agree?
