European Court Sees No Right to Wed for Same-Sex Couples

There is no existing right to marriage for same-sex couples, according to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

The Daily Mailreports that the court decided in the case of Valerie Gas and Nathalie Dubois, who have been in a French civil union since 2002, that not allowing them to marry wasn't discrimination.

"The European Convention on Human Rights does not require member states' governments to grant same-sex couples access to marriage," the ruling said, according to the Mail.

Gas and Dubois have been together since at least 1989 and legally barred from marrying in France. After DuBois gave birth to a child by using a sperm donor, Gas had tried to become the adoptive parent, but the French government wouldn't allow it. The court ruled, according to AFP, that denying the adoption also wasn't discriminatory because straight couples in civil unions wouldn't be able to access that arrangement either.

What has right-wing activists most excited, though, is the court's assertion that any country that grants marriage equality is also requiring all churches to be open to same-sex couples. A church that refused to allow a same-sex wedding would be guilty of discrimination, it warned.

Proponents of legalizing same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom, for example, had argued that churches would be exempt from the law and wouldn't have to perform weddings they didn't approve of.