A “somewhat forgotten page of history”. This Wednesday, November 22, a bill aimed at recognizing the policies of criminalization of homosexuality in France between 1942 and 1982 will be debated in the Senate. Supported by socialist senator Hussein Bourgi, and co-signed by more than twenty PS senators, this proposal firstly includes a memorial component. The objective is to “recognize the harm that the application of these repressive laws may have caused to homosexuals” in the second half of the 20th century, explains to Le Figaro the senator, member of the socialist, environmentalist and republican group (SER).
This bill also includes a section aimed at providing “reparations to people who have been convicted of homosexuality”. Thus, in addition to the reimbursement of the fine which the convicted persons had to pay at the time, the text also mentions “a fixed flat-rate allowance of 10,000 euros” and “a variable flat-rate allowance depending on the number of days of deprivation of liberty, set at 150 euros per day,” we can read in the bill.
But what laws are we talking about? It was in 1942, under the Vichy regime, that homosexuality was once again criminalized in France – in 1791, the Napoleonic code marked a first step in the decriminalization of homosexuality -. Concretely, the law of August 6, 1942, by modifying paragraph 1 of article 334 of the Penal Code, established “a discriminatory distinction in the age of consent between homosexual and heterosexual relations: 21 years for homosexual relations, and 13 years for heterosexual relations (then 15 years from 1945)”, reports the explanatory memorandum of the proposed law. Thus, the Vichy regime officially penalized homosexual relations for those under 21.
And although many Pétainist laws were repealed during the Liberation, this was not the case with this one. Under the provisional government of the French Republic, paragraph 1 of article 334 was simply transferred to paragraph 3 of article 331 of the Penal Code. The latter thus punished “with imprisonment of six months to three years and a fine of 60 francs to 15,000 francs anyone who commits an immodest or unnatural act with an individual of their sex under the age of twenty-one”.
In 1960, “an amendment by MP Paul Mirguet considering homosexuality as a social scourge accentuated this penalization,” adds Hussein Bourgi. Concretely, the provision doubled the minimum sentence for public outrage of modesty, when it came to homosexual relations, in fact creating an “aggravating character of homosexuality”, finally specifies the explanatory memorandum.
For the senator, it was therefore important to legislate on the subject. It was necessary to recognize the “errors of the past” in order to soothe “the wounds of people who are in the twilight of life,” he explains. “It seems unreal today to say that in France this existed and that between 50,000 and 70,000 people were worried in application of these laws,” insists the elected representative of the upper house. Especially since the people concerned not only received “fines or imprisonment”, but also suffered “social opprobrium”. For some, this was even accompanied by dismissal from public service or dismissal.
It was in 2002, during a conference in Montpellier organized for the 20th anniversary of the 1982 law definitively decriminalizing homosexuality in France, that Hussein Bourgi was challenged by the subject. Twenty years later, on the 40th anniversary of the 1982 law, he finally decided to follow in the footsteps of countries like “Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom or Canada” which had already decided to return to these periods past.
“Being a senator for 3 years, I tabled this bill, considering that it was necessary to do it now while the last witnesses and actors were getting older and disappearing one after the other,” says the senator. Before deciding: “Doing it when they were all dead would be pointless. Apart from clearing one’s conscience.” And for Hussein Bourgi, this law has a good chance of passing: “I think that this bill is consensual. It does not raise any major hostility,” he emphasizes. According to Public Senate, if the law is adopted, an independent commission will then be created to “establish the veracity of the facts” and carry out repairs, if necessary.
