The actress made an appeal to local elected officials to endorse the National Front leader so that she could gather the 500 signatures she will need to run in the two-round 2012 election two months away.
"I am scandalised that French mayors are so cold they don't have the honesty to back Marine Le Pen, who is a top candidate, defends animals and has the courage to lead our country, France, to its rightful spot in the world," it read.
The appeal from Bardot, a longtime animal rights activist, came days after Le Pen spoke out about animal suffering over the weekend, claiming all meat in the Paris region is prepared using Islamic halal traditions.
Some animal welfare campaigners say the halal slaughter method is more cruel than standard European practices because it bans the stunning of animals before they are killed.
Le Pen, whose party plays on fears of growing Muslim influence, trails election rivals President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande in opinion polls, with 17 percent of intentions in the latest vote.
Still about 60 sponsorships short of the 500 required by March 16 to secure a spot on the presidential ballot, Le Pen had requested the sponsor list remain private, saying she felt hampered by their public nature.
The constitutional court decided Tuesday to keep the votes public, as France gears up for the first round of the election on April 22 and the second-round run-off on May 6.
Bardot has over the years campaigned against whaling in Japan, bear-hunting in New Jersey, wolf-hunting in Sweden, dolphin slaughter in Denmark and other animal rights causes.
She is married -- for the fourth time -- to a former aide of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen's father and predecessor as leader of the National Front.
She has been fined for inciting hatred against Muslims by attacking the "Islamisation" of France and the ritual slaughter of animals in Islamic culture.
WASHINGTON —The Obama administration on Friday said it would not defend the constitutionality of statutes blocking same-sex military spouses from receiving marriage benefits — including rights to visitation in military hospitals, survivor benefits, and burial together in military cemeteries. In a letter to the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that the Justice Department shared the view of plaintiffs in a lawsuit in Massachusetts that such laws — including a part of the Defense of Marriage Act, and statutes governing veterans’ benefits —are unconstitutional. Mr. Holder announced nearly a year ago that the Obama administration would no longer defend a section of the Defense of Marriage Act that prevents federal recognition of same-sex marriages that are legal at the state level. In response, House Republicans hired a legal team to defend it in the other lawsuits.. Mr. Boehner and other Republicans have strongly criticized the move, saying the Justice Department has a duty to defend federal statutes. A spokesman for Mr. Boehner’s office referred questions to lawyers hired by the House, who did not respond to an e-mail. As in the earlier case, the administration also said Friday that it would continue to enforce the statutes applying to same-sex military spouses unless Congress repealed them or a court ruling striking them down. In his letter on Friday, Mr. Holder invoked the same reasoning that he cited a year ago in the other cases: laws treating people in same-sex marriages differently from heterosexual relationships serve no compelling government interest and violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. “The legislative record of these provisions contains no rationale for providing veterans’ benefits to opposite-sex spouses of veterans but not to legally married same-sex spouses of veterans,” he wrote. “Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Veterans Affairs identified any justifications for that distinction that could warrant treating these provisions differently from” the marriage act. The lawsuits that generated the administration’s decision a year ago involved civilian legal matters, such as the right of a surviving spouse not to pay estate taxes on inherited assets. The new lawsuit involves military-related matters.