…to the heterosexuals. A WaPo article about the plummeting marriage rate in France

The increase in out-of-wedlock birthrates is even more dramatic: Last year, 59 percent of all first-born French children were born to unwed parents, most by choice, not chance. The numbers were not driven by single mothers, teenage mothers or poor mothers, but by couples from all social and economic backgrounds who chose parenthood without marriage vows.

France’s two most high-profile female politicians live with well-known partners they have not married. Ségolène Royal, who last week won the Socialist Party nomination for president in next year’s election, and Francois Hollande, the party’s leader, have had four children during their 25 years of cohabitation. French Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, another possible presidential contender, has spent nearly 22 unmarried years living with Patrick Ollier, a member of the National Assembly.

"We never had time to get married," Alliot-Marie said in a recent interview. Royal has expressed distaste for the notion, once calling marriage a "bourgeois institution."

"Getting married 30 years ago was part of a tradition," said Maiten de Cazanove, who trains counselors for the Catholic Church’s French Centers for Marriage Preparation, an organization engaged in public outreach to lure more couples to the altar. "People got married because their parents were married and couldn’t imagine their children not getting married, or having children outside of marriage. . . . Nowadays, people who don’t want to get married don’t do it to rebel, or to reject religion; they do so because to them, loving someone doesn’t have anything to do with society. It’s personal."