Trains, buses and cars poured into Paris today bringing protesters from around France for a mass demonstration against gay marriage, a divisive reform President Francois Hollande has pledged to enact by June.
Five high-speed trains, 900 buses and countless car pools left provincial towns, many before dawn, and headed toward three starting points in the capital for the marches due to converge at the Eiffel Tower in the late afternoon.
Strongly backed by the Catholic hierarchy, lay activists have mobilised a hybrid coalition of church-going families, political conservatives, Muslims, evangelicals and even homosexuals opposed to gay marriage for the show of force.
"We want this draft law to be withdrawn," Patricia Soullier, a protest organiser, told BFM-TV before boarding a Paris-bound train in Montpellier in the south of France.
Several hundred thousand were expected to march in near freezing temperatures against the reform, which Hollande promised in his election campaign and has enough votes in parliament to pass easily.
The president angered many opponents by trying to slip the reform through parliament without much public debate and has wavered about some details of the reform.
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