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Protests Follow French Vote to Legalize Gay Marriage

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(Image credit: Gay marriage via Shutterstock)

Rioting protesters and tear gas marked a vote to legalized gay marriage Tuesday (April 22) in France.

Paris, typically associated with love and romance, was the site of distinctly un-loving protests as France's National Assembly voted 331 to 225 to approve same-sex marriage, according to the Associated Press. Anti-gay-marriage activists charged police and were dispersed with tear gas. Though U.S. protests against same-sex marriage are typically not so tense, the United States and France show similarly even splits on the issue. According to Sky News, a recent poll in France pegged support for same-sex marriage at 58 percent (53 percent opposed adoption by same-sex couples). In the United States, the Pew Research Center finds that 49 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage and 44 percent oppose it, as this infographic explores.

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Stephanie Pappas
Stephanie Pappas
Live Science Contributor

Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.