“From the classic scouts’ game” to… “Now it’s for real.” Initiation to activism in groups sparked by the La Manif pour tous movement

During the French vote on same-sex marriage, small subgroups of students and young professionals have emerged alongside La Manif pour tous (LMPT). Among these small-scale organizations, “Les Veilleurs” and “Les Gavroches” crafted a rhetoric based on “conquering the streets” and public space, developing an alternative playbook to LMPT’s classic way of working. Invoking Gramscian “cultural combat”, they aimed to continue the mobilization efforts and ensure their visibility at a time when their decline was underway. Their search for “new methods of action” sheds light on the concrete ways in which these conservative Catholics learn to protest publicly despite their relative dearth of experience in activism. Drawing on an ethnographic lens, this article seeks to identify what these tactical repertoires reveal about mobilized resources, internal targeting, and cultural motives. Transfers and borrowings, the initiatory function of these repertoires, their ideological roots, and their urban occupation patterns altogether reflect a learning process and a mobilization that seeks to politicize well beyond gender issues.