The French Senate is due to debate a bill on Wednesday that would allow people convicted under anti-gay laws dating from before 1982 to receive financial compensation.
Michel Chomarat was arrested in 1977 during a police raid on a gay bar called “Le Manhattan”.
“State homophobia consisted of tracking down gays everywhere“, he declares.
The bar was a private space with limited access,”but despite this, the police took us away in handcuffs and charged us with indecent assault“.
Thousands of people were convicted under two French laws in force between 1942 and 1982. One determined the age of consent for homosexual relations and the other defined such relations as an aggravating circumstance in acts of ” outrage to good morals.”
Now aged 74, Michel Chomarat believes that a new bill providing for compensation to people convicted under these laws is coming.too late“, because many people entitled to compensation have already died.
French lawmakers are expected to begin debating the bill on Wednesday.
At the origin of the project, Senator Hussein Bourgi, of the Socialist Party, declared: “This bill has symbolic value“.
He wants the French government to recognize the role of the State in discrimination against homosexual people.
“It aims to rectify a mistake the company made at the time“, says Hussein Bourgi.
The sanctions imposed by the courts were “consequences much more serious than we think today“, he adds.
“Many people’s lives have been turned upside down. Some lost their jobs or had to leave their city“.
Beyond the government’s recognition of the wrongs, Hussein Bourgi declared that he also wanted an independent commission to grant financial compensation of €10,000 to each victim.
Repression of homosexuality
Antoine Idier, sociologist and historian, describes the initiative as “salutary“, but considers that it would be too restrictive to limit it to the two laws mentioned.
“Judges used a much broader legal arsenal to suppress homosexuality“These include laws that do not specifically target same-sex relationships but “moral failings” Or “the incitement of minors to debauchery“.
Régis Schlagdenhauffen, professor of social sciences at EHESS in Paris, suggests that at least 10,000 people were convicted of homosexuality in France between 1942 and 1982, mainly men from working-class backgrounds.
A third of them were married and a quarter had children.
“These convictions brought shame on them and were a terrible experience to live through.“, according to Mr. Schlagdenhauffen.
“This is the reason why many victims of state repression do not come forwardhe adds, preferring not to relive this traumatic experience.”
In June, a collective of activists, trade unionists and civil servants called for the recognition and rehabilitation of victims of anti-gay repression in an article published in the LGBTQ magazine Têtu.
“One of the reasons homophobia persists in today’s society is that state laws, rules, and practices have legitimized this discrimination in the past.” said Joël Deumier, co-president of SOS Homophobia, a non-profit organization that defends the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and intersex people.
For Hussein Bourgi’s text to become law, the Senate and the National Assembly must first vote in favor.
During this process, there are often negotiations over the final wording of a bill in order to make it acceptable to both chambers.
European precedents
There are precedents for the French initiative elsewhere in Europe. Germany decided in 2017 to rehabilitate and compensate around 50,000 men convicted based on a 19th-century law criminalizing homosexuality, which was expanded by Nazi Germany and only repealed In 1994.
Austria is taking a similar approach, which is expected to come into force next year.
In Britain, where sexual relations between men became punishable by death under the Buggery Act of 1533, it was decriminalized in England and Wales in 1967, then in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
However, this only applied if the sex took place in private and the people involved were over 21 years old.
Under a recent “acceptance and forgiveness programme”, Britons can have old convictions for homosexual offenses expunged from police and court records.