POLITICS – A controversial choice. By appointing Michel Barnier as Prime Minister on Thursday, September 5, Emmanuel Macron irritated LGBT+ rights defenders. As soon as the presidential choice was announced, they did not fail to point out that the former RPR MP had voted a few decades ago against the decriminalization of homosexuality among minors over 15 years old.
Michel Barnier appointed Prime Minister: the oldest head of government of the Fifth Republic succeeds the youngest
“Michel Barnier had therefore voted against the… decriminalization of homosexuality”recalled on X (ex-Twitter) the spokesperson for Stop Homophobia, Maxime Haes, a few minutes after the announcement of the nomination of the new French Prime Minister.
“A Prime Minister who voted against the decriminalization of homosexuality is a more than questionable choice!”declared the AFDH, the association of homoparental families. While violence against LGBTQIA+ people has never been so strong, we expected something else from Emmanuel Macron,” she regrets.
Inter-LGBT, which brings together dozens of associations defending the LGBT+ community and notably organizes the pride march, said: “dismayed”seeing in this nomination “a clearer sign than ever that the government will be hostile to our rights and existence!”.
While Michel Barnier is best known for negotiating Brexit and serving as Foreign Minister under Jacques Chirac, the right-wing politician is also one of those who opposed repealing legislation that criminalized consensual homosexual relations among adolescents.
Different age of sexual majority between homosexuals and heterosexuals
In the early 1980s, the French Penal Code still made a distinction between the age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual relations. The former was set at 18, the latter at 15. A decision inherited from the Vichy regime.
The Minister of Justice at the time, Robert Badinter, then denounced a text which, according to him, was “ an exceptional charge, the maintenance of which is justified by nothing, not even historical tradition.” A position shared by the socialist MP Gisèle Halimi who, when voting to repeal the text in the National Assembly on 20 December 1981, declared: “If there is an individual choice that must escape any codification, it is that of sexuality.” She is then defending a text responding to a campaign promise by the President of the Republic, François Mitterrand, who had promised that homosexuality would cease to be a crime if he were elected.
“For us, sexual freedom includes homosexuality and our opponents say the opposite,” added the rapporteur of the Law Commission. A few minutes later, 155 deputies expressed their disagreement and voted against the repeal of the text: Jacques Chirac, François Fillon, Jean-Claude Gaudin… and Michel Barnier were among them. But the 327 votes “for” won.
The National Assembly would then have to reiterate this position several times in the face of a refractory Senate so that finally, on August 4, 1982, the age of sexual consent became the same whether one was a homosexual or heterosexual teenager.
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