© Eric Feferberg/AFPSupporters of the "La Manif Pour Tous" (Protest for Everyone) movement demonstrate to defend their vision of the traditional family, on February 2, 2014 in Paris.
Tens of thousands of people marched in Paris and Lyon on Sunday against new laws easing abortion restrictions and legalising gay marriage, accusing French President Francois Hollande's government of "family phobia".
Police said 80,000 people took to the streets of the French capital, creating a sea of blue, white and pink -- the colours of the lead organising movement LMPT (Protest for Everyone) -- who gave a far higher turnout figure of half a million.
Demonstrator Philippe Blin, a pastor from nearby Sevres, said he felt a "relentlessness against the family" in France.
At least 20,000 rallied in Lyon, many of them ferried in aboard dozens of buses, waving placards reading "Mom and Dad, There's Nothing Better for a Child" and "Two Fathers, Two Mothers, Children With No Bearings" -- a slogan that rhymes in French.
Comment: Although the media in France and abroad has been trying to spin the mass demonstrations in France as 'right-wing extremist', it's clearly anything but, with people from all ethnic and political backgrounds protesting against the corrupt elites.
The 500,000 figure is what the organizers
claim, which is probably far closer to reality.
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