The French government’s attempts to have old-fashioned pink and blue sexual stereotypes replaced with a basket of new kinky stereotypes celebrating same-sex parents, homosexuals, transvestites and the like – have run into trouble.

France’s Socialist Hollande government, mired in unprecedented depths of unpopularity, was caught red-handed with its latest social engineering experiment: a pilot project in some 600 kindergartens based on gender theory. The issue had been stewing ever since the passage last spring of the same-sex marriage law that granted homosexuals the right to marry and raise children in wholesome families. Adoption rights are extended, children born in previous heterosexual relationships can be cuddled in recomposed matrimonially united 2-mother or 2-father families.

The implied promise of normalization of children brought into the world with the help of artificial insemination and womb rental and the eventual legalization of these methods in France rounded out the package. But widespread opposition to the indoctrination of male-female equality, starting with day care centers and kindergartens, has blocked the “social progress” momentum.

While tens of thousands of well-behaved citizens marched for five hours on February 2 in protest against the government’s “family phobic” measures, cabinet ministers, commentators and, for some reason, journalists, too, parroted government talking points: the demonstration was totally uncalled for. Neither womb-rental nor artificial insemination for lesbian couples is in the proposed Family Affairs bill. As for the decried gender theory, it doesn’t exist. Women’s Rights Minister & government spokesperson Najat Vallaud-Belkacem kept repeating: This demonstration is uncalled for, it’s based on fear mongering and vicious rumors, there is no such thing as gender theory, we are teaching male-female equality, helping children overcome stereotypes that lead to homophobia and violence again women while stifling their professional ambitions.

The Family Affairs bill is indefinitely postponed. Family values advocates are not reassured, the LGBT contingent is furious, and social engineering is alienating the Left’s Muslim clientele.

Farida Belghoul, who was in the forefront of the Beur [second generation Arab-Muslim immigrants] movement in the 1980s is back with JRE [journée de retraite de l’école]: Parents opposed to gender theory indoctrination keep their children home from school in a once-a-month boycott organized by Belghoul via her text message network. Farida Belghoul has forged an alliance with Alain Soral, France’s most unashamed National Socialist [= Nazi], 100 percent anti-Semite, and buddy-buddy with the comedian Dieudonné. Videos of her talks are posted on Soral’s Egalité et Réconciliation [Equality and Reconciliation] website, cheek to jowl with tirades against the “Jew-loving” Interior Minister Manuel Valls; the Minister of Education, Vincent Peillon, who is a Jew; and long winded exposés on the civilization Soral is defending… from the Jews.

Belghoul has no compunction about drawing French Muslims, including banlieue youths, into her coalition with Soral. A strong Catholic society, she declares, is the best protection for Muslims in France and worldwide. “If France falls, we all fall.” Her discourse and her physical appearance are frantic. Her plea for family reconciliation – husbands with wives, children with parents – seems to be fuelled by personal disappointments. She concludes her talks with a resounding “Vaincre ou mourir” [vanquish or perish]. Her claims about sexual indoctrination in the schools may be oversimplified and exaggerated, but when she displays a merry multiple family book that celebrates all combinations – mother & father + child, 2 mothers + child, 2 fathers + child, 1 female-female couple & 1 male-male couple + child, etc. – her exasperation is shared by multitudes outside of her unsavory movement.

Scores of titles were exposed in the aftermath of the February 2 demonstration. Opposition leader Jean-François Copé discovered “Tous à poil” [everybody strips]: everyone from the baby-sitter to the grandfather and including the postman, the teacher, the traffic cop is realistically drawn in explicit nakedness with full display of what used to be called the “private parts.” The publisher did a new print run of 2,000 to satisfy demand stimulated by the controversy. Vallaud-Belkacem said Copé is an Inquisitionist book burner.

Other titles emerged, celebrating same-sex parents, homosexuals, transvestites etc. via animals or human beings: Two male birds raise an egg deposited in their empty nest by an anonymous donor, a princess doesn’t like princes, a tomboy, a boy in frilly dresses, brother and sister toddlers playing tickly games in bed… in short, those silly old-fashioned pink and blue stereotypes are replaced with a basket of new kinky stereotypes. It turned into a game of ping pong: opponents of gender theory would display a title on official reading lists, national education authorities would deny it and simultaneously take it off the lists. The ABCs of Equality used in schools, they said, owes nothing to gender theory. It doesn’t exist.

Why do politicians keep lying in the old fashioned way when everything they ever said is available with one click of the mouse? Interviewed in August 2011 by the giveaway newspaper 20 Minutes,  Belkacem is asked how “gender theory” can help change society. She replies: “By showing that the socio-cultural context is as much a factor as biology in determining  ‘sexual identity’ gender theory raises the question of unacceptable, persistent inequalities between men and women, and homosexuality, and shows us how to educate on these subjects.” I noted Vallaud-Belkacem’s LGBT commitments in my profile [Dispatch International May 2013], and her intention to develop programs based on the findings of a commission she appointed to study sexual stereotypes. The report included an enthusiastic account of an experimental Norwegian kindergarten where the children were never identified as boys or girls.

Having copiously fawned over its Muslim clientele for decades – it is estimated that Francois Hollande got 80 percent of the Muslim vote to 14 percent for Sarkozy – the Left is alienating this electorate with its social engineering. On the other hand, voters attracted by the Left’s progressive agenda are drastically disappointed. The extent of the damage will be counted in the coming municipal elections (March 23 and 30).

Speaking of stereotypes, isn’t Najat Vallaud-Belkacem a sterling example of the use of feminine charm to defend anything and everything? Despite her boyish haircut and unisex style Vallaud-Belkacem is an attractive young woman with lovely eyes and French elegance. As befits her role, she speaks the words put in her mouth by the government, lies with disarming sincerity, attacks her opponents with a delicately sheathed blade.

As for President Hollande, he runs a full range of feminine attributes, from the fertility companion Ségolène Royal, mother of his four children, to Valerie Trierweiller, maturely glamorous journalist, to the sexy young movie star, Julie Gayet. And Najat asks kindergarteners why so few girls want to be stonemasons?

EDITORS NOTE: The featured picture is of François Hollande à Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire taken by Ludovic Lepeltier. The photo is under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.