Michel Chomarat was arrested in 1977 during a police raid on a gay bar called “Le Manhattan”.
“The homophobia of the state was to hunt down gays everywhere,” he said.
The bar was a private space with restricted access, “but still the police took us away in handcuffs and accused us of public moral outrage”.
Thousands were convicted under two French laws in force between 1942 and 1982. One set the age of consent for same-sex relations and the other defined such relations as an aggravating factor in acts of ‘public indignation’.
Now 74, Chomarat says a new bill that would see people convicted under the anti-gay laws receive compensation has come “too late” because many of those entitled to compensation have died.
French lawmakers will begin debating the bill on Wednesday.
The bill’s sponsor, Senator Hussein Bourgi of the Socialist Party, said: ‘This bill has symbolic value.
Bourgi wants the French government to recognise the role of the state in discriminating against people in same-sex relationships.
“It aims to correct a mistake made by society at the time,” Bourgi said.
The sentences handed down by the courts “had consequences that were much more serious than you might think today,” he added.
“People were crushed. Some lost their jobs or had to leave the city”.
In addition to the government’s acknowledgement of wrongdoing, Bourgi said he also wanted an independent commission to administer financial compensation of €10,000 for each victim.
Repression of homosexuality
Antoine Idier, a sociologist and historian, called the initiative “salutary”, but added that focusing on two laws from the period was too restrictive.
“Judges used a much broader legal arsenal to suppress homosexuality. These included laws that did not specifically target same-sex relationships, but rather “moral failings” or “incitement of minors to depravity”.
Regis Schlagdenhauffen, a social science professor at the EHESS school in Paris, said that between 1942 and 1982 at least 10,000 people were convicted of being gay in France, mostly men from working-class backgrounds.
A third of them were married and a quarter had children, he said.
“These sentences brought shame and were a terrible experience to live through,” said Schlagdenhauffen.
This is why many victims of state repression do not come forward, he said, preferring not to relive the traumatic experience.
In June, activists, trade unionists and officials called for the recognition and rehabilitation of victims of anti-gay repression in an editorial in the LGBTQ magazine Tetu.
“One of the reasons why homophobia persists in today’s society is that state laws, rules and practices legitimised such discrimination in the past,” said Joel Deumier, co-president of SOS Homophobie, a non-profit organisation that defends the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people.
For Bourgi’s text to become law, it must first be approved by the Senate (the upper house of parliament) and then by the National Assembly (the lower house).
During this process, the final wording of a bill is often negotiated to make it acceptable to both houses.
European precedent
There is a precedent for the French initiative elsewhere in Europe. Germany decided in 2017 to rehabilitate and compensate some 50,000 men convicted under a 19th-century law criminalising homosexuality, which was extended by Nazi Germany and only repealed in 1994.
Austria is taking a similar approach, with legislation due to come into force next year.
In Britain, where sex between men was punishable by death under the Buggery Act of 1533, sexual relations between men were decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967, and later in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
But only if the sexual relations took place in private and the people involved were over 21.
Under a recent ‘disregard and pardon’ scheme, people in Britain can have a historic conviction for gay sex offences removed from police and court records.