It is. The french constitution state:
> La libre communication des pensées et des opinions est un des droits les plus précieux de l’homme ; tout citoyen peut donc parler, écrire, imprimer librement, sauf à répondre de l’abus de cette liberté dans les cas déterminés par la loi.
Which mean that you have free speech, BUT, you can be prosecuted if you abuse it as defined by the law. Example of common abuses: defamation (the most common), incitement to ethnic or racial hatred, privacy violation, historical revisionism, intellectual property infringement, etc.
But except "incitement to ethnic or racial hatred" and "historical revisionism" it's mostly the same in the US.
Also, it's not all about the law, during the same sex marriage debates, a lot of homosexual people got beaten by far right / nazi-like groups.