Europe 1 with AFP 3:27 p.m., March 7, 2024

“A good surprise” for LGBT+ associations: deputies unanimously approved during the night from Wednesday to Thursday a bill aimed at recognizing and repairing the harm suffered by homosexual people as a result of discriminatory laws in force between 1942 and 1982 in France.

"I am very happy, even moved. I have been fighting for almost 50 years because I never accepted this arrest and this conviction", reacted to AFP Michel Chomarat, 75 years old, sentenced after having been arrested in May 1977 in Paris, alongside eight men, during a police incursion into the gay bar “Le Manhattan”.

The National Assembly examined at first reading this text initially carried by Senator Hussein Bourgi (PS) and approved by the High Assembly in November.

For Joël Deumier, co-president of SOS Homophobia, this is an “extremely strong signal sent by the National Assembly”.

A unanimity which creates “a good surprise”

The deputies reestablished the principle of financial reparation for people convicted of homosexuality and the creation of a commission responsible for ruling on requests for financial reparation, which the Senate had removed.

“There can be no recognition without reparation,” added Joël Deumier to AFP.

The text was the subject of a very broad consensus, 331 deputies having approved it out of 331, even if certain groups expressed reservations on the principle of financial compensation.

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This unanimity is "a good surprise", commented to AFP Terrence Katchadourian, secretary general of Stop Homophobia, who believes that the deputies "really heard" the messages conveyed by the associations.

“The fact that France is asking for forgiveness and compensating sends a good message internationally”, at a time when homosexuality remains repressed, even punishable by death in many countries around the world, he added.

"Pardon"

"It is high time to (...) say this evening in the name of the French Republic: forgiveness, forgiveness to the people, to the homosexuals of France who have suffered for 40 years, this totally iniquitous repression. Our Republic has never been so beautiful only when it knows how to recognize that it has lost the thread of its founding principles, freedom, equality, fraternity", underlined the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti.

With regard to financial compensation, which should be implemented by a commission established ad hoc, Eric Dupond-Moretti drew attention to the fact that it would be faced with "probative difficulties": "it will not be "For some people it is not easy to prove that they have actually spent a specific time in prison or that they have paid the fine to which they were sentenced," he warned.

The rapporteur of the text, the PS deputy Hervé Saulignac, considered that recognition could not go without reparation.

“I think France is capable of doing what Germany did, what the United Kingdom did, what Ireland did, what Spain did, what Canada did” , he argued, estimating that the number of people eligible for compensation could be between 200, as in Spain, and 400, as in Germany.

Tens of thousands of convicts

The bill, which will now resume its legislative journey in the Senate, recognizes discrimination against homosexual people between 1942 and 1982, based on two articles of the penal code, one establishing a specific age of consent for relationships homosexuals and the other aggravating the repression of public outrage of modesty committed by two people of the same sex.

However, judges at the time used a much broader criminal arsenal and all kinds of articles to repress homosexuality, recalls Antoine Idier, sociologist and historian.

It is difficult in these conditions to know precisely how many people have been convicted of homosexuality in France.

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Around 10,000 convictions were handed down under the article which established a specific age of consent and around 50,000 for public outrage against homosexual modesty, according to Régis Schlagdenhauffen, lecturer at the School of Advanced Studies in Sciences. (EHESS) and specialist in the subject.

Many of the people concerned have already died and others are elderly, which means that few of them would request financial compensation.