PARIS -- French President Francois Hollande has signed into law a bill allowing same-sex marriage, making France the 14th country to legalize gay weddings.

France's official journal announced on Saturday the bill had become law after the Constitutional Council gave it the go-ahead on Friday.

The bill, a campaign pledge by the Socialist president, has been for months hotly contested by many conservatives in France, where allowing gay marriage is one of the biggest social reforms since abolition of the death penalty in 1981.

Opponents have staged huge and often violent demonstrations against the bill and have called yet another protest on May 26. The leader of opposition to gay marriage, a political activist and humorist who goes under the name of Frigide Barjot, has said the protest would draw millions into the streets.

Montpellier mayor Helene Mandroux, who is due to celebrate France's first gay marriage in the southern city on May 29, said the law marked a major social advance.

"Love has won out over hate," she said, while voicing concerns the first gay wedding could attract violent protests.

France, a predominantly Catholic country, follows 13 others including Canada, Denmark, Sweden and most recently Uruguay and New Zealand in allowing gay and lesbian couples to wed. In the United States, Washington D.C. and 12 states have legalized same-sex marriage.

Unlike former president Francois Mitterrand's abolition of the death penalty, which most French people opposed at the time, polls showed more than half the country backed gay marriage.

Nonetheless, with Hollande's popularity ratings at record lows a year into office, the law has proved costly for the president with critics saying it has distracted his attention from reviving the recession-hit economy.

After lawmakers adopted the bill in late April, opponents had sought to scupper it with a last-ditch appeal to the Constitutional Council.

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Being gay hasn’t been a crime in Russia since the Soviet era, but Orthodox Church leaders are successfully pushing anti-gay legislation. Last week, St. Petersburg became the fourth Russian city to pass a law banning “homosexual propaganda,” a vague measure that effectively bans gay pride parades.  

The law criminalizes “public action aimed at propagandizing sodomy, lesbianism, bisexualism, and transgenderism among minors,” the Guardian reported. Those who break the law could be fined up to $16,000, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

Dmitry Pershin, who heads the Church’s youth council, told the Guardian the law would help “protect children from information manipulation by minorities that promote sodomy." Close allies of Vladimir Putin, the president-elect, support federal anti-gay laws.

Yury Gavrikov, the head of the gay rights group Equality, said that Russian higher-ups tend to quash any group that stands up for its rights, the Guardian reported.

"The main goal seems to be limiting the rights of those who engage in social activity,” Gavrikov told the Guardian. “But in its widest sense, it can mean limiting exhibits, plays, film showings – cultural activities."

Polina Savchenko, a gay-rights activist in St. Petersburg, told the Christian Science Monitor that no legal experts have been able to explain to her how the law would be applied in practice.

"There is a fear that it will be used as an instrument to prevent any kind of activity the state doesn't approve of,” Savchenko said. “The language of the law is so vague that it could apply to any kind of public discourse, any discussion of gay issues, in almost any venue. I mean, how can you be sure that minors won't access the Internet, or read mass media discussions?"

Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993 but hostility remains. Gay pride parades have been banned in Moscow, according to ThinkProgress.org; in May, when activists marched anyway, police moved in and beat up 30 people.

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The White House announced further efforts Tuesday to consider the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in its foreign policy decision-making.

In a memo released today, President Obama directed all "agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons." In short, it means the U.S. will now evaluate how countries treat its LGBT citizens in its foreign policy.

In the memo, the president refers to his speech at the United Nations earlier this year where he said, "No country should deny people their rights because of who they love, which is why we must stand up for the rights of gays and lesbians everywhere."

And in an effort to highlight this move, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a human rights policy speech in Geneva, Switzerland in honor of Human Rights Day. "Gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights," said the secretary. 

The White House outlines several steps agencies will take in protecting LGBT rights abroad:

• Combat the criminalization of LGBT status or conduct abroad. 
• Protect vulnerable LGBT refugees and asylum seekers. 
• Leverage foreign assistance to protect human rights and advance nondiscrimination. 
• Ensure swift and meaningful U.S. responses to human rights abuses of LGBT persons abroad. 
• Engage International Organizations in the fight against LGBT discrimination.
• Report on progress.