A gay couple have said "oui" for the first time in France, days after the prime minister warned that the warned that the homosexual union would be legally "null and void."
Stephane Chapin, dressed in a white suit and dabbing tears of joy from his eyes, and Bertrand Charpentier, in deep gray pinstripes, embraced, kissed and smiled broadly after the brief civil ceremony in the Begles town hall in southwestern France, near Bordeaux.
The justice minister quickly said that the Bordeaux court would be petitioned to declare the marriage null, while the interior minister said the mayor who performed the ceremony -- a Green party politician known as a provocateur -- would be sanctioned. . .
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"The more he saw of Europe, the dearer his own country became, taking a
luster to all its parts that no one bound to the farther shore could know it
merited." (p. 331)
