It was an announcement.pink notebook“. Monday April 22, Simon Porte Jacquemus announced on Instagram the birth of his twins, Mia and Sun. “Welcome to Earth, my loves. We love you very much. Our dream came true with you“, he wrote under the photo of the two little hands of the newborns.
In a few minutes, congratulations rained down from anonymous people and stars like Victoria Beckham, Inès de la Fressange, Carla Bruni, Lena Mahfouf and even Nabilla. The story could have ended there.
“This uninhibited homophobia is mind-blowing!”
The next day, the affair took a political turn. On the social network https://twitter.com/MarionMarechal/status/1782787105350983688 reacts among the thousands of messages sent to the creator and her husband, Marco Maestri. The head of the list of the Reconquest party in the European elections writes: “Where is the mother?“
A reaction which directly calls into question the legitimacy of the family that the Provençal designer, her husband and their twins now form. The candidate is not the only one to criticize, sometimes in particularly violent terms, this announcement on X as on Instagram.
His tweet then led to numerous responses to protest against this question, first and foremost Prisca Thevenot, the government spokesperson. https://twitter.com/priscathevenot/status/1782849219436638585 : “This uninhibited homophobia is mind-blowing! Today we celebrate 11 years since the adoption of Marriage for All, a great victory for equality. Let us continue to mobilize against all forms of discrimination and to guarantee the rights of all citizens.“
Also joined by the former Minister of Transport, now MP, https://twitter.com/CBeaune/status/1782833017372696673scathing: “Never the last for a disgusting comment, about a family and children…” And https://twitter.com/olivierdussopt/status/1782910494103269395the former Minister of Labor, also an MP: “Two dads. Who love each other and who love these children. It is good too. A family. It is essential“. Two politicians who have publicly discussed their homosexuality, the first in 2020, the second in 2023.
“It’s a question of ethics and dignity”
https://twitter.com/MarionMarechal/status/1783014475236262049/photo/4 responded to these three tweets by quoting Emmanuel Macron. “Dear Clément Beaune, Prisca Thevenot and Olivier Dussopt, it is a question of ethics and dignity“. In 2017, while campaigning for the presidential election, Emmanuel Macron published a tweet on GPA. “During my five-year term, surrogacy will remain prohibited in France. It’s a question of ethics and dignity.”
In his program, Emmanuel Macron then specified that it was necessary “recognize the existence and give legal status to children who live in France and who were born from surrogacy abroad, because these children cannot be the victims.” He also asked that France initiate “an international Hague-style convention to combat the commodification of women’s bodies and child trafficking.”
They are not the only politicians to have reacted. https://twitter.com/RimaHas/status/1782799339800170999LFI candidate for the Europeans, wrote in response “Where is your brain? Question that we have been asking for generations for the Le Pens“, the environmentalist senator https://twitter.com/Melanie_Vogel_/status/1782830285022732357 asks the same question. As for the communist senator https://twitter.com/IanBrossat/status/1782862116459790541he outbids: “I would always prefer to have two dads than a mother like Marion Maréchal“.
Faced with strong criticism, other personalities reacted. Wednesday April 24, Christophe Beaugrand stepped up to the plate on C à vous. He returned to the comments of RN deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy on BFMTV who assured that Marion Maréchal’s comment was not “homophobic“while regretting the choice of words of the candidate who”lack of respect for people“.”We focus on respect for the law, respect for women, and the prohibition of the commodification of bodies. (…) GPA is prohibited in Marine Le Pen’s project, it is prohibited in Mr. Macron’s project“.
“I just ask for respect from our family”
The animator, angry, said “This gentleman, who is supposed to write the laws, obviously does not know the law. It is absolutely not illegal to use surrogacy in a country where it is regulated. And more than that, know that there is a circular from Christiane Taubira in 2013 which makes it easier to obtain papers for French parents who have used surrogacy abroad. (…) So, enough of the fake news. There are families and children who suffer from all of this. All of this is being sullied by politicians who are trying to get publicity about it and it disgusts me.”
Christophe Beaugrand became the father of a little boy in 2019. He wrote a book about it “Daddy’s Boy”. On the set of C à vous, he still tells “My child is registered in the family record book, he has a French birth certificate. So I clearly forbid anyone from saying that I have circumvented French law, that I am a delinquent and that my child was bought abroad. You can’t imagine the suffering this represents for tens of thousands of families in France. Okay, we are in the extreme minority, we don’t want to be the majority. There’s no idea of proselytizing or anything. I just ask for respect from our family.“
On Thursday April 25, the controversy grew when French politicians welcomed a vote in the European Parliament which had taken place two days earlier. In this case, a revision of the directive against human trafficking was adopted. It includes forced marriage, illegal adoption and exploitation of surrogacy in the list of Eurocrimes.
Which allowed some like François-Xavier Bellamy to sum up this vote in fact “to include surrogacy in the European directive against trafficking in human beings. A somewhat quick shortcut since it is not the GPA as such that is recorded but its use for others. As noted by HuffPost, the adopted text specifies: “With regard to trafficking for the purpose of exploitation of surrogacy, this Directive targets those who force women to become surrogates or trick them into doing so.“. It is therefore the forced GPAs which are targeted.
Simon Porte Jacquemus did not, at any time, specify how he became a parent with his husband nor the story of how his twins came into the world.
